Batboard

Howdy,

I picked up this 4 bay UHF dipole a few years back, and had it in the box until a couple days ago. Now I have no idea what model it is. The only thing I recall is that it was made by Antenna Specialists. Anyone have any idea??

Looks like a DB-404 or a variant thereof....

Hello again,

I didn't have much luck finding what model this is, and now I have no idea what the element spacing should be. Any ideas?

The harness pretty much says it all.

Try this...

http://www.radiowrench.com/sonic/so02202.html

I can't determine the brand of that, but it isn't a DB-404.
Yours is a standard 4 bay, not double bays like the DB-404 & 408.
Yours uses stainless steel hose clamps, to attach the bays.
I have used that brand before, but I can't recall who made them.
Light weight, but worked OK.

Thanks guys.

I did sort of guess based on the harness, but it could have easily worked from about 20" to 25" center to center. To test, I mounted them about 21" but the problem is there's no easy way to gauge the pattern. Ran it on the analyzer and it's flat across the 10Mhz I checked.

How great of an affect will there be based on incorrect spacing?

Hard to say without having a firing range to test it on. Set it up as an omni, and you probably won't notice any issues.

I believe that Bill meant to say an antenna range and not a firing range.

Jim

Measuring a couple other 440 antennas, that 21 to 25 sounds about right.
I would think it will work fine if you are off the designed spacing.
Might not have exactly the same gain, and maybe the pattern will skew a little, but you probably won't be off enough to notice. Might be hard to measure the difference.
If you have good return loss, I would use it.

Jim202 wrote:I believe that Bill meant to say an antenna range and not a firing range.

Jim

Yep. We had a chamber at GM Proving Grounds we called the firing range to blast cars and trucks with RF. It was also used by other groups to test their antennas.