The W1GHZ Online Microwave Antenna Book
Paul Wade W1GHZ (N1BWT) © 1994,1995,1996,1997,1998,1999

I think it's great that the ARRL has reprinted many of my microwave antenna articles from QEX in the new ARRL UHF/Microwave Projects Manual, Volume 2, so that they are available to microwave newcomers who may not have access to back issues.  The book is a good reference for all microwavers, and we should all have a copy.  Another good reference is the QEX CD-ROM newly released by the ARRL, covering 1981 to 1998.

On the other hand, I keep trying new ideas and learning new things, particularly about antennas.  Many of these come from other hams who read the articles and explain things better or simply ask questions that get me thinking or reading.  Then I'd like to go back and revise the articles, but how?  One way might be to put the articles online, with instant update capability.  As I thought about reorganizing the material,  it occured to me a that it might become an online book, which can remain unfinished.  Already there is material here that is unavailable anywhere else.

Much of the antenna literature has a high mathematics content; Since I can't visualize complex math any better than most people, I've tried to make this material more accessible by illustrations, picture, graphs and other visual aids.  One advantage of the online format is no additional cost for color pictures and graphics, so I have used color liberally.  The result is good readability on a color monitor, but printing can be expensive. There is no need to print everything -- save the files and print pages as you need them.

The format I chose is the Adobe PDF file format, since it produces compact files for downloading and may be viewed and printed with the freely available Adobe Acrobat Reader.  Version 3.02 of Acrobat Reader allows your browser to display pages as they are received, without waiting to complete the whole download, and the new version 4 adds a very useful search capability.  I created these files using Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Pagemaker, which provide the capability to integrate text and graphics into a single file.

Each chapter is separated into one or more files for reasonable download times through a modem.  In the Table of Contents, I will maintain a date for the latest update to help readers to track changes.  I'll also try to make major changes stand out somehow, perhaps with italics or color.

Please help make this useful for all of us.  Corrections, comments, and questions are welcome.  Pass the URL on to microwave newcomers, print out sections for the computer-impaired, or reprint extracts in your club newsletter (see Copyright for details).

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