Conifer antenna wifi

The Conifer antennas used by Galaxy were designed to operate at a different frequency than wireless networking, and have a down-convertor integrated in the feedhorn. They need to be modified before they can be used for To ensure the correct balun impedance of 50 ohms, the ratio of the inner diameter of the copper tube to the outer diameter of the brass rod should be approx 2.

The The testing indicates that this dipole provides at least 3dB better signal strength than the more common Galaxy modification ie, soldering coax onto the cut-off down-convertor PCB.

Recently, a fellow WAFreenet member replaced the pcb dipole in his 18dBi Galaxy dish with a dipole I constructed using the method described above, and saw an increase in SNR of approx dB. Visit Here for more. Sign Up. Modifying Conifer Antennas for Wireless Networking. Don't be too brutal, every millimeter counts at this frequency! I used a hacksaw, maybe a sharp knife could be used instead? Push the coaxial connector up through the plastic nose cone. This took a bit of effort because of the sticky glue used to hold it in place, but a little help from a phillips.

Remove the downconverter from the nose cone. This is a half wave stub, the coax shield will be connected to this. The other side with t. Cut the PCB just above the amplifier chip - See the photos below Clean up the PCB cut with a file. Carefully solder the coaxial cable to the balun, the picture shows heliax cable connected to the balun.

Here the shield has been soldered to the bottom of the balun. Make sure the coaxial cable tails are kept as short as possible. This will help to maintain efficiency. Here is the other side of the balun. The center wire of the coaxial cable is soldered onto the single track. This track originally connected to the amplifier chip on the downconverter PCB board.

Again keep the lead lengths as short as possible. Put a small drop of glue on each locator lug to hold the dipole in place. Here is the assembled modified nose cone ready for gluing back together. You may want to use N type connectors. Don't use UHF connectors at this frequency. Be very carefull putting the connectors on the cable, a mistake electrical short here will be disasterous!

Glue the plastic nose cone and reflector back on the nose housing. Seal off the coaxial cable entrance hole with silicon glue. Well at last we have our masts up and we have a permanent 11Mbps link. We have installed Mandrake Linux onto laptops, and use these for the Cisco Wavelan cards.

The Laptops run the security and act as gateways to the other computers on our network.