FARS - Articles by Steve Stearns, K6OIK

"Antenna Modeling for Radio Amateurs"

Presented at ARRL Pacificon Antenna Forum
October 17, 2008

by Steve Stearns, K6OIK

You can download your own copy of this Antenna Modeling for Radio Amateurs Lecture. You will need a PDF viewer to display this document. The document is 4.4MB.

"New Results on Antenna Impedance Models and Matching"

Presented at ARRL Pacificon Antenna Forum
October 19, 2007

by Steve Stearns, K6OIK

You can download your own copy of this New Results Lecture. You will need a PDF viewer to display this document. The document is 6.4MB.

"Antenna Impedance Models - Old and New"

Presented at ARRL Pacificon Antenna Forum
October 15, 2004

by Steve Stearns, K6OIK

You can download your own copy of this Antenna Impedance Models Lecture. You will need a PDF viewer to display this document. The document is 983KB, so it will take about 3 minutes to download with a 56K modem.

"Mysteries of the Smith Chart: Transmission Lines,
Impedance Matching, and Little Known Facts"

Presented at ARRL Pacificon '99, '01, and '02
Concord, California
by Steve Stearns, K6OIK

ABSTRACT: This talk is divided into three parts: uniform transmission lines, the Smith chart, and matching networks. In Part 1 we review the historical development of uniform transmission lines. Topics covered are: line synthesis; the calculation of transmission line parameters from geometry, dimensions, and material properties; various "optimum" coax dimensions; impedance transformations, and the properties of special lengths of line, such as half-, quarter-, and eighth-wave lines. We show how to use an antenna analyzer to measure the characteristic impedance and velocity factor of a transmission line. In Part 2 we introduce the Smith chart and show that in addition to being an intuitive graphical method for solving complex impedance transformations, it can also be used as a nomogram for basic math calculations. In Part 3, we discuss the reasons for matching, the best ways to match, and the design of single-frequency, multiple-frequency, and broadband matching networks.

You can download your own copy of this (updated 2001) Smith Chart presentation. You will need a PDF viewer to display this document. The document is 2.3MB, so it will take about 10 minutes to download with a 56K modem.