August Meeting with Speaker Ed Fong WB6IQN
The August meeting was with Ed Fong (WB6IQN). As many of you know, he is the inventor of the DBJ-1 and DBJ-2 antenna that was featured in the February 2003 and March 2007 QST. His most recent antenna was the TBJ-1 – a triband base antenna that was published in March 2017 QST. The DBJ-1 is a highly effective dual band VHF/UHF base station antenna and the DBJ-2 is the portable roll up version. The DBJ-2 won the QST Plaque of the Month Award. Both of these antennas are featured in the ARRL VHF antenna Handbook and also in the ARRL Antenna Classic Handbook. There are over 18,000 of these antennas in use today. About half are used by hams and the other half by government and commercial agencies. He will also give a brief discussion of his triband antenna (TBJ-1) that was featured in March 2017 QST.
Ed gave a history on how these antennas were developed and the theory on how and why they work so well. There is no “black magic” to antennas. He will explain in a non-mathematical manner why these antennas work so well.
Biography –
Ed Fong was first licensed in 1968 as WN6IQN. He later upgraded to Extra Class with his present call of WB6IQN. He obtained the BSEE and MSEE degrees from the Univ. of California at Berkeley and his Ph.D. from the Univ. of San Francisco. A Senior Member of the IEEE, he has 12 patents and over 40 published papers and books in the area of communications and integrated circuit design. Presently, he is employed by the University of California, Santa Cruz (previously with Berkeley from 1997-2010) as an instructor teaching graduate classes in RF design and high speed interface. In his 35 year career, he has done work for Stanford University, National Semiconductor, Advanced Micro Devices, numerous startup companies in the Silicon Valley.