We’re all new to everything once. This was new to me.

Click to enlarge: The Wow signal. I thought this made an interesting illustration. If you’re interested in what the signal was not, check out Skeptoid’s take on it - Skeptoid #342: Was the Wow! Signal Alien? >

CB radios operate in the 27MHz range.

My scanner antenna is supposed to hear 30-30,000MHz.

My ham antenna is tuned for 144-148 MHz (2m band) and 435-450 MHz (70cm band).

I recently wrote (here >) that I hooked up a repaired Realistic TRC-232 CB to my scanner antenna and it worked. It was actually my car ham antenna that I’d hooked up to. (They both use BNC connectors.)

So then I was wondering, why does an antenna tuned to 144-148 MHz (2m) and 435-450 MHz (70cm) pick up the 27MHz range?

My guess was that either 2m or 70cm was roughly an even divisor of the CB band; antennas work best when they are full, half, quarter, 8th, etc of the wavelength you are trying to receive.

Also, antennas can't cover a range of frequencies equally well, so the edges of a range are going to perform far less well than the middle.

CB radio waves are ~11m. Doing a little math, .7m is ~1/16 of 11m, so, I'm guessing that the reason the ham antenna gets any signal at all is because it is ~1/16 a wavelength of the CB band.

I don't know if this is correct, but based on what I could learn at this helpful antenna article > , I'm not too far off, though I've committed every conceivable sin in mounting an antenna.

We’re all new to everything once. This was new to me.

[2013-09-30]

 

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