The slot antenna can be made out of any metal surface or plate, with the length of the slot being cut out by a frequency determined in advance. It can be designed and constructed using a discarded TV dish reflector. Believe me when I tell you that it works.

In essence, what you have is a half-wave dipole, and I suppose a quarter-wave. At roughly 12 inches, I was aiming for the UHF scanning range. The 12-inch edition worked quite well on VHF frequencies also.

I don’t know why, but when I cut the slot longer, the signals started to weaken. On this particular day band conditions were not ideal. Go figure.

If you look at the design of the satellite dish, you’ll see two main bolts in the center that hold the frame together. I grabbed one of the bolts, after cutting a 12 inch slot with my saw blade. (Safety glasses are recommended.)

(Be sure to stay clear of the frame when sawing, because you’ll bite into the frame and ruin the dish, like I did. It’s good that I had a spare. Actually, a piece of metal flashing might work better anyway.)

I drilled a hole opposite of the other bolt that was still holding the frame. So what you have is a 12 inch slot and 2 bolts on each side of it. In my experiment, I chose to go dead center of my 12 inch slot, which I found out later was not the proper measurement. The feed point is supposed to be off-center. What can I say.

When I used the feed point in the center it worked great. Matter of fact, when I lengthened the slot, receive was not as strong.

The correct measurements (VHF 2 meter band) call for 24 inches on the horizontal line, with 7 1\2 inch line on both sides of the cut (39 inches total). The feed should be about 4 1\2 inches from one of the 7\12 inch sides.

The horizontal slot will offer vertical polarization by the way, if you can wrap your head around that one!

Make your own balun using 6 turns of coax, or grab a TV transformer balun, if you are using the dish for receive. I was in the scanner listening mode.

To my surprise this project did work. With my 12 inch slot fed at half point, I received frequencies a good distance away from my shack.

Those that live in a homeowner restricted area could opt to use their satellite dish as a 2 meter antenna! This sounds like a crazy idea, but I think that it might be pulled off.

Give it a try!