The ILA Antenna

ILA stands for Ionic liquid Antenna these antennas are basically a tube "mostly PVC" filled with some form of conductive liquid such as salt water in high concentrations. I first stumbled across this idea in 2006 while browsing threw the homebrew antenna section of www.ac6v.com this lead me to n9zrt's web site the more I read about these antennas the more fascinated I became so I decided to build one for my self.    
     
     


First checks after building the support frame


 
     
Finished antenna after adding the tuning port "drain valve" and the 12 radials. the antenna was constructed from 2" PVC filld with 2.5 gl of highly concentrated salt water basicly I added salt to the boiling water until it would no longer desolve any more salt.    
     
 
     
  The results of the testing of this antenna were very surprising.

First I found this antenna very quiet for a vertical antenna this antenna was tuned for 17 meters using the standard formula 234/f or 12.9 ft. for comparison I had a 17 meter dipole up about 15 ft. off the ground using a antenna switch I could quickly compare the two antennas compared to the dipole the signals were on average about 2 S units below the dipole but the noise floor on the ILA was 4 to 5 S units below the dipole. This meant that at times I was able to hear and work stations on the ILA that I couldn't even hear on the dipole.
Second The antenna was very broad banded the 2:1 tuning range of the antenna extended from the upper half of the 20 meter phone band to about the middle of the 15 meter CW band. This is with 75 ohm feed line so I was starting with a 1.5:1 at the center frequency had I used 50 ohm feed line the antenna may had covered most of 20 & 15. Speculation is that the reason this antenna is so broad banded is that the skin effect no longer applies and each molecule of the liquid is excited threw the full water column.
  





ILA log
Date       Time     Call        RST sent RST rcvd. Freq. Mode  Pwr  Name       QTH
11-19-06   18:41z   AA1KS       57       57        18    SSB   100  RICK       MOOSE ISLAND  ME
11-19-06   20:50z   W7COH       58       58        18    SSB   100  PAUL       WESTHAVEN  UT
11-19-06   21:29z   8P6SH       57       57        18    SSB   100  DEAN       BARBADOS
11-23-06   17:40z   AB0BI       57       57        18    SSB   100  BERT       BONNETERRE  MO   
11-30-06   15:25z   PJ2/G0RTN   57       57        18    SSB   100  GERRY      CURACAO  ISLAND
12-12-06   20:46z   K8FL/C6     59       59        18    SSB   100  JAMES      ELEUTHERA  ISLAND
12-17-06   22:25z   K6SMF       59       59        18    SSB   100  NEIL       KANOGA PK  CA
12-17-06   22:30z   NT4TT       59       59        18    SSB   100  ED         IDAHO FALLS  ID
12-24-06   23:48z   WA6DKN      59       59        18    SSB   100  DAVE       HIDDEN HILLS  CA
12-25-06   18:26z   M0YCM/6Y5   55       52        18    SSB   100  LESS       JAMACA
12-30-06   20:42z   KK6BS       53/59    51/59     18    SSB   100  JOE        SAN DEAGO  CA  BAD QSB
12-31-06   18:30z   NT4TT       59       59        18    SSB   100  ED         IDAHO FALLS  ID
12-31-06   22:03z   XE1KK       59       59        18    SSB   100  RAMON      MEXICO CITY
01-01-07   20:16z   GF75A       59       59        18    SSB   100  SPECIAL EVENT STATION MEXICO 75TH 
                                                                    ANNAVERSARY OF HAM RADIO IN MEXICO
01-01-07   22:09z   KM6TS       59       43        18    SSB   100  PAUL       PALMDALE  CA
01-01-07   22:44z   AL9A        59       57        18    SSB   100  GARY       WASILLA  AK
01-01-07   22:53z   JH0HQP      57       55        18    SSB   100  HARRY      TAKURA  JAPAN
01-08-07   15:30z   NT4TT       59       59        18    SSB   100  ED         IDAHO FALLS  ID
02-04-07   16:31z   HI3TEJ      59       59        18    SSB   100             DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
02-27-07   15:06z   9A2YM       59       59        18    SSB   100  STEVE      CROATIA
03-18-07   21:38z   WA6DKN      59       54        18    SSB   100  DAVE       HIDDEN HILLS  CA


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