YAGI array?

[JCwarez]

Has anyone ever tried an array of say 5 Yagi antenna's at different degrees? I was thinking of locations at say 300, 330, 0, 30 and 60 degrees mounted on same horizontal plane, connected all together with Y connectors to 1 cable going to PC card. anyones thoughts or better yet experience with such a setup.

[0phoi5]

Would it not be more practical to have 1-2 antenna that just rotate, on a turntable?

The computer connected could do the mapping work then, instead of the equipment needing to be larger.

[JCwarez]

1 hour ago, haze1434 said:

Would it not be more practical to have 1-2 antenna that just rotate, on a turntable?

The computer connected could do the mapping work then, instead of the equipment needing to be larger.

i was thinking more for a wide field of view or to be able to see more at the same time. im not so much looking at practical, i was just wondering if possible? and instead of a narrow window of focus would it expand your FOV to say 60~100 degrees? I guess i should rephrase the question to, is there anything limiting multi yagi to 1-10 extra antennas on the same line?

[hwally]

Why not a simple omni directional antenna.  

[kerravon]

or use one of the online antenna calculators and design a discone for 2.4/5Ghz depending on what you want.

[0phoi5]

On ‎01‎/‎01‎/‎2017 at 9:04 PM, hwally said:

Why not a simple omni directional antenna.  

Not quite the same reach in all directions, unfortunately. You make a 360 degree antenna, you lose some distance.

As an example, this is the reason radar isn't omni directional - it uses a rotating dish instead, meaning it can still cover 360 degrees, but it also covers maximum distance instead of losing some of that power.

Of course, firstly, it would be recommended to go back to the drawing board and figure out exactly why one needs a non-directional antenna in the first place. If the scenario is that one has to have 360 degree coverage and also has to have the maximum range possible, it's better to use a rotating directional than an omni.

Simple set up would be to find out the beam-width of the directional antenna, spit 360 degrees by that number and then rotate the antenna this many times, capturing traffic in each direction in one capture file.

You could rig up a simple turntable that automatically rotates the beam-width say every minute, captures traffic on a certain channel, then maybe switches channel after each 360 degrees and keeps going, capturing to one file. Run this for half an hour and you'll have a long-range, good capture of all traffic within the area. The directional won't capture close-by stuff, but then you can use a simple, low power omni for this. Pretty sure you could build the above with a RPi and a motor (or this one).

Edited January 3, 2017 by haze1434

[barry99705]

Or just do it the way cell providers do it.  Use a few sector antennas.  Also, Y connectors don't work for microwave, unless they have some kind of circuitry inside.  Normal splitters will bleed away most of the signal.  So, you'd need one of these, and three of these.  Plus whatever pigtails to connect the antennas to the splitter, then the splitter to your capture device.  The antennas and splitter use N connectors, so say four of these.  Now I'll assume your device uses rpsma, so one of these.

$11.99
$79.99
$186.67
$186.67
$186.67
$20.99
$20.99
$20.99
________
$714.96 plus tax and shipping.

Not going to be cheap, and can't guarantee it will work.