PLAzmA Posted May 26, 2012 Share Posted May 26, 2012 Hey, Hopefully someone could help me out, ive recently purchased a few wifi antennas for a few projects, i modded my dir 615 (dd-wrt) to have some bigger external antennas: Yeah overkill i know... However the yagi i got (which was only cheap), the signal is pretty poor even compared to a standard 6DBi antenna. When i opened it up, the powered elements were not aligned and off as skewed angles, so i straightened them out, however the signals still not great Forgive my bad drawing. As far as i can tell the incoming connector has each wire connected to one of the elements, however there is also this small wire which is about 1 and a bit inches long which has two cores which is connected with one of the wires onto each element as well. So my questions are. Am i correct in straitening out the elements to be square? Is the antenna wired properly? If so why is this little 2 inch wire in there? Hope someone answer my question :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PLAzmA Posted May 29, 2012 Author Share Posted May 29, 2012 BUMP, can someone shed any light on this for me. Should i de-solder the smaller cable ? From what ive seen on other places with home made yagi like here : http://www.instructables.com/..... The driven elements are connected on one part of the loop, as i dont have a loop in mine just two plates, does this mean the smaller wire should be there, but should be soldered at the end to connect the two plates? Come on there must someone who knows how i can make this antenna work properly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Cooper Posted May 29, 2012 Share Posted May 29, 2012 It looks to me like your driven element is a dipole so you shouldn't connect the two plates together. The little cable is a bit odd, especially as I can't see it actually connected to anything at the other end. My first thought was perhaps it was a balun, or similar, to avoid issues with impedance matching. Just to state the obvious, don't forget that the antenna is directional (i.e. you get a better gain on signals to/from some directions than others) and as such you might find that adjusting the direction of the antenna will get you a better signal. Don't just point it directly at the targeted antenna, try pointing it around it as well. Other things to check are the lengths of the driven element, director elements and reflector elements and make sure they are suitable for the frequencies you are using. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ech3l0n Posted June 12, 2012 Share Posted June 12, 2012 The extra 1 inch cable may just be a pull cord to help strip the outer coax sheath off, similar to what most Cat5 cables have. As stated above, it is directional, but that does not mean you will get your best signal pointing it directly at your target, the pattern of a yagi, especially a cheap one can be all over the place so move it around a bit. I don't know what your plans are for this, but you can build a hell of an wifi antenna out of an old sat dish and a soup can, I had built dozens before purchasing a nice 24db gain grid dish antenna. When it comes to antennas, like many other things, you get what you pay for. Ech3l0n Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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