I made this antenna on a rainy Sunday afternoon with expectations it wasn't going to work. I used an online calculator some 14g solid copper wire and a piece of PVC pipe. Drilled the holes for the elements with the right spacing for each, guesstimated really on how far the insert them to there was somewhat equal lengths on each side, secured the with hot glue. I split a piece of coax and soldered it to driven element and done! It took me less than an hour to build it. I couldn't test it right then so I waited till the following weekend. When I got around to testing it I was VERY surprised! The signals I was receiving were really strong and sounded good and clear.
The reason for building this antenna was for listing to satcom pirates and just because. There are a lot of pirates out there, there is one guy that just send SSTV images over and over again. Again I'm new to this type of communications so I don't know for sure which satellites I am hearing. There are 2 directions I point to receive different signals and different voices east southeast & southwest. Southwest sounds more like Brazilian voices and east southeast sounds like Spanish. I think the southwest bird is FLTSATCOM 7 (USA 7) @ 100°W and the east southeast bird is FLTSATCOM 8 (USA 20) @ 54°W. Each satellite has many channels. If you want to know more, good luck. I have found there is not much info about these and some info contradicts itself. But anyways its interesting to learn about. If your reading this and can help me out with what frequency = channels and what bird they belong to, send me an email from the contact page or find me on Twitter. Below are just few pictures and samples of the type of signals I receive.
{gallery}Satcom_Antenna{/gallery}