Antenna Building
Hands-on antenna projects built, tested, and used by Pac Beach participants—from simple portable wire antennas to directional fox-hunting antennas and remote rotator systems.
Built to learn. Built to use.
Our antenna projects are designed to be practical, affordable, and useful after the event. Participants learn the basics of antenna construction, tuning, feed-line management, mechanical design, and field deployment while building equipment they can take home and operate.
Linked Dipoles
Multi-band wire dipoles using removable links to change operating bands without a tuner.
Participants measured wire sections, installed insulators and connectors, built the feed point, and tuned each band for portable HF operation.
Tape Measure Yagis
Lightweight directional antennas built from steel tape-measure elements and a simple boom.
These flexible yagis are durable, easy to transport, and especially useful for satellite work, portable VHF/UHF operation, and fox hunting.
Handheld Fox-Hunting Loops
Compact directional loop antennas designed to help locate hidden transmitters.
Builders learned how loop nulls work, how to reduce signal strength when close to the fox, and how to use body shielding and attenuation to improve direction finding.
Remote Antenna Rotors
Remotely controlled antenna rotator systems built for portable directional arrays.
Previous projects included remote positioning systems for the BuddiHEX, allowing azimuth control from the operating position instead of manually turning the antenna.
Homemade Loading Coils
Custom-wound coils for electrically shortening antennas and experimenting with portable vertical designs.
Participants explored coil diameter, turn spacing, inductance, tap points, mechanical support, and the tradeoff between compact size and antenna efficiency.
Testing and Tuning
Every build becomes a learning exercise once it is connected to test equipment.
Builders use antenna analyzers and field testing to check resonance, SWR, bandwidth, feed-line effects, and real-world performance.
Bring your own antenna idea
Pac Beach is a great place to test experimental antennas, ask for help with tuning, compare designs, or show off a build that others may want to copy.