Gerard's Gerard's BeerBarrel

487
Item nr.

Gerard's BeerBarrel Antenna

Beer can design, adapted to DAB band.

**Data for Gerard's BeerBarrel**
Production	The Netherlands, 2018.
Bands	DAB+ (170-230MHz).
Cabinet	Cardboard tube.

The Design

The internet offers a design of a beercan antenna, basically a dipole constructed from two empty beer cans. Impressive improvements of DVB reception are reported. After studying Wikipedia on dipoles, I thought the design could be improved in two ways for DAB+. First, because the wavelength is larger (about 1m50 for DAB against 50cm for DVB), larger cans should be used. Second, because the dipole is symmetric and coax is asymmetric, a balun should be included. The resulting Beer barrel antenna proved the best in a small comparison between DAB antennas.

Obtained	10/2018 from home built.
Condition	8.
Value (est.)	2,2€.

This Object

I started the construction buying two big cans of beer, each containing half a litre. The internet advocates the use of steel cans because you can solder them. My comparison beer can antenna used aluminium cans (yes, there are other ways to attach wires than by soldering).

But steel cans can also be found, they are marked with Fe (for the latin Ferrum) or a picture of a magnet. The drinking phase takes a lot of time, because I don't swallow two of these on a day, and soldering after drinking is unsafe. An airchoke is not really the same as a balun, but I constructed this small coil in the feed wire. The coil spaces the two cans, and the feed wire goes through the lower can (the one connected to the mantle of the coax).

The antenna is enclosed in a cardboard tube and the picture at the top shows it connected to my Akai DAB+ radio. On the right a combination of DAB + radio, antenna, and L'AMiGo as output amp and speaker.

Part of Gerard's Radio Corner.
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