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Old 24th Feb 2021, 8:05 pm   #14
regenfreak
Heptode
 
Join Date: Nov 2018
Location: London SW16, UK.
Posts: 655
Default Re: Radiation resistance and gain of ferrite antenna

Quote:
You do not want world record setting Q from an antenna.

Q is a measurement of the loss of energy from a resonator

You WANT to lose energy from an antenna

You just have a preference that the loss is into the radiation of an electromagnetic wave and not into the warmth of the hardware. You can treat reception as being reciprocal in most cases.

So your model of your antenna WILL contain resistance. Your Q should not be terribly high. The art lies in the partitioning of it between radiation and thermal losses.
Thanks. This is really thought-provoking and like a knock-out punch to the notation that the higher the Q the better the resonator.

Quote:
Some years ago designs for copper loops a few feet in diameter (no ferrites, just a resonating capacitor) popped up in magazines and journals. some of them used straight lengths of plumbing type copper pipe and 135 degree Yorkshire fittings to make an octagon. Careful analysis showed that more oomph went into the 16 soldered joints than got radiated. The loop resistance (ESR) was small, but the radiation resistance was smaller. The sliding contacts in variable capacitors put the tin lid on it.
If you ever try to measure high Q inductors (Q >1000), you will notice that crocodile clips and leads are ruthless Q-killers causing large insertion losses. Contact switches create massive insertion losses, it is the magic of skin effect of RF on the surfaces of conductors.

Below is the primary coil of my large tesla coil. To reduce heating and skin effect losses, I use 6mm copper tubes and 200A automobile battery cable and thick copper 2cm braids as earth cable. The peak RF ground current pulses are over 1000A based on software simulation. The resonance frequency is 150KHz. The copper tubes and the 200A cable get hot after a few minutes of operation. If the contact clip between the primary tapping in the photo is not good, you would get like scary arcing between the turns of primary coil. It happened to me a few times and it could set off fire.
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Last edited by regenfreak; 24th Feb 2021 at 8:11 pm.
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