Range Measurement Techniques for CP Television Antennas

With the advent of circularly polarized antennas for television broadcasting, antenna engineers are not only faced with the designing and manufacturing of a breed of new antennas but also with measuring their performance on a test range. Measurement techniques commonly employed with horizontally polarized antennas are not sufficient to adequately describe circularly polarized antenna performance. This paper will discuss some problems that could be encountered in the measurement of circularly polarized broadcast antennas and offer some solutions to these problems. Two basic types of measurements will be discussed, those made on scale models and those made on full size antennas.