What do I do with my antenna?

[alan2525]

I've got an IP Engineering Jessie, and am fitting RCS R/C to it. I've actually remade the frames, added some more frame spacers to allow a geared motor and bevel drive to be fitted. Also fitted a rather fetching walace and gromit inspired console in the cab for running and charging lights and some sub miniature toggle switches to control lamps etc.

RCS Radio gear will fit in purpose made vacuum formed abs boxes, contol board on roof and reciever inside the cab either on the floor under a dummy raised floor or bolted to the back cabsheet.

But what to do with the antenna, It needs to be on the cab roof as high as possible and as far away from electro magnetic fields from motor / batteries etc. Should I  snake it around under a dummy vent on the cab roof, should this panel be made from plastic or would metal be ok?

[MDLR]

With a title like THAT, you're asking for someone to tell you where to stuff it!

Seriously though, you could do worse than adopt the Roundhouse approach - make a cab roof ventilation panel with a small spade tag soldered to the underside. Put a large hole in the cab roof (so there's no chance of the tag touching the sides of the hole), fit the ventilator to the roof with thick double-sided tape (the sort that R/C fliers use to locate stuff in an aircraft - I believe it's called Ripmax tape) and solder a female spade tag to the end of the aerial lead.

That should do it!

[mhlr]

Now then MDLR, I wish I had thought of that when building my IP Jack!! Instead, I made a new roof vent out of Plastikard, then coiled the antenna underneath, then fitted the vent with those sticky fixers. I am loving the control pannel though, its fantastic!!

[alan2525]

Now then MDLR, I wish I had thought of that when building my IP Jack!! Instead, I made a new roof vent out of Plastikard, then coiled the antenna underneath, then fitted the vent with those sticky fixers. I am loving the control pannel though, its fantastic!!

I slipped a bit of heatshink tube over the lead, solder a spade terminal onto the end of the aerial, and then a larger diameter heatshrink over the spade terminal, cut a little piece of nickel silver 55mm x 60mm and pot rivetted a little tag on it for the sake of testing, went to plug in, oop solder had flowed all around my spade connector, plug solder iron in, heat up, cut off carefully applied heatshrink, redo, resolder, rinse etc.

Strapped the extra wotsits onto a block of wood and strapped to cab roof with a stout rubber band...

...performance has improved but still nowhere near the advertised 100 foot range, looking about 20 feet at the moment.

any ideas?

It's still fun but it's a case of needing a good line of sight when it's about 20 feet away or else has to do some strange semophore gestures at the loco with radio transmitter in one hand..

[alan2525]

With a title like THAT, you're asking for someone to tell you where to stuff it!

Seriously though, you could do worse than adopt the Roundhouse approach - make a cab roof ventilation panel with a small spade tag soldered to the underside. Put a large hole in the cab roof (so there's no chance of the tag touching the sides of the hole), fit the ventilator to the roof with thick double-sided tape (the sort that R/C fliers use to locate stuff in an aircraft - I believe it's called Ripmax tape) and solder a female spade tag to the end of the aerial lead.

That should do it!

I tried that, it doesn't seem to have made much of an impact on it's range, still seems to be about 12 - 20 feet max! Not sure what to try next, batteries all charged up 15volt from the 14.4v battery and a good 9 volt PP3 in the transmitter.

[TonyW]

Is the radio 27MHz, 40MHz or 2.4GHz?