How many birds does it take to change the SWR? This is just a bit of fun looking at the very small but consistent changes that a group of swallows make to the Voltage Standing Wave Ratio (SWR) on my home made 20 metre antenna. It’s not a scientific experiment but the results were, not surprisingly, reasonably consistent as it’s a well know fact that you can use capacitive loading to alter the characteristics of an antenna. I did toy with the idea of arranging bird food at the ends of the elements were their capacitive effect would be more noticeable but I didn’t want to encourage the crows as if they decide to land on the beam en masse as I think they would do more damage than just transiently shift the SWR! Thanks for watching, if you’re interested in radio you’ll find some hopefully interesting items amongst my other videos, there’s a No19 set, a Spy Radio, some vintage radios and the construction of the 20 metre beam featured in this video. Kind Regards …Andy gw0jxm
Video Rating: 5 / 5
