Perfectly Tuned ‘Genetic Antenna’ for 30m Band!

Those who have followed my blog or YouTube channel would very well know that I have been struggling with my 80/20m loaded coil dipole antenna. After a lot of permutations and combinations, I have stopped the project when it has resonated perfectly for the 30m amateur radio band. They say that an antenna for 80m can resonate for the 30m band as it is the third harmonic. In my case, may be because it is a loaded coil dipole antenna, it has never resonated on 80m, still it had shown good SWR values during several stages of its evolution, reaching the best value of near 1:1 through out the narrow 30m band today. That is why I called it a ‘Genetic Antenna’.

Genetic antennas have unconventional designs and are produced by computer modelling involving large number of possible patterns and finally getting the best results, like the genetic evolution of living organisms proposed by Charles Darwin. This is the picture of an X-Band Antenna of the ST5 Satellites which was made some time back, using such a method and was successfully deployed on a satellite.

I am unable to explain how my current antenna has best SWR without tuning on the entire 30m band, which I have never had for any of my homebrew antennas! In the current configuration, it has fair resonance on 20m, with SWR ranging from 2 at the lower end to 2.8 at the upper end. It also shows SWR slightly above 5 on 12m band. On all other bands including 80m band for which it was originally intended, it shows HI SWR.

As I already have a multi-band fan dipole which covers 20m, I am intending to keep my ‘Genetic Antenna’ for 30m just like that and try if I can get some contacts with it at different times of the day. It is already being picked up by the Reverse Beacon Network at VU2PTT at a distance of 171 miles, with a signal to noise ratio of up to 22 dB so far. There is an old saying which says “Aim at the sky and you will reach at least the roof”. I had aimed for an 80m antenna and ended up with a 30m antenna!