RHOMBIC ANTENNA The highest development of the long-wire antenna is the RHOMBIC ANTENNA (see figure 4-37).

It consists of four conductors joined to form a rhombus, or diamond shape. The antenna is placed end to end and terminated by a noninductive resistor to produce a uni-directional pattern. A rhombic antenna can be made of two obtuse-angle V antennas that are placed side by side, erected in a horizontal plane, and terminated so the antenna is nonresonant and unidirectional.

The rhombic antenna is WIDELY used for long-distance, highfrequency transmission and reception. It is one of the most popular fixed-station antennas because it is very useful in point-to-point communications. Advantages The rhombic antenna is useful over a wide frequency range. Although some changes in gain, directivity, and characteristic impedance do occur with a change in operating frequency, these changes are small enough to be neglected.

The rhombic antenna is much easier to construct and maintain than other antennas of comparable gain and directivity. Only four supporting poles of common heights from 15 to 20 meters are needed for the antenna. The rhombic antenna also has the advantage of being noncritical as far as operation and adjustment are concerned. This is because of the broad frequency characteristics of the antenna. Still another advantage is that the voltages present on the antenna are much lower than those produced by the same input power on a resonant antenna. This is particularly important when high transmitter powers are used or when high-altitude operation is required.
A rhombic antenna is a type of antenna that covers a wider range of frequencies than most antennae. It is usually used for high frequencies, which are also known as shortwave. The most common use of a rhombic antenna is in amateur radio relay and broadcasting. The rhombic antenna is a broadband directional antenna. The broadband has nothing to do with internet access, but rather refers to the fact that it can work with an unusually wide range of frequencies. Directional means that the antenna receives signals best from a specific direction, meaning it should be pointed toward the source with which it is communicating. The name of the rhombic antenna comes from the fact that it consists of four conductors, in the form of wires, arranged in a diamond shape. To work to full effect, these wires have to be symmetrical. This means all four should be the same length, and the angles at which the pair of wires on either side of the diamond must be the same. The reason this shape works so well is that the two wires at the side that connects to the rest of the equipment acts in a similar fashion to a funnel. Although the rhombic antenna must be pointed in a specific direction, its wide range means that it is easy to combine multiple antennae effectively. One example of this is to combine six antennae so they face in different directions across all three dimensions. In effect, the antennae are pointed in the same way as the six faces of a die, although it's not possible to literally set them up to form a cube. That's partly because of the potential for interference, and partly for the simple fact that rhombus shapes can't form a cube. With this set up of six antenna, depending on the user's location, it may be possible to receive signals from the majority of populated areas on the planet. The main advantages of the rhombic antenna include its cheapness. This is because only four poles are needed, one to support the wires at the points where they meet. Another benefit is that the broad range of frequencies means there is more room for error in setting up and adjusting the antenna. The main disadvantage of the rhombic antenna is that it requires a comparatively large area on which to be erected. It is also subject to earth losses below the antenna, which can significantly reduce efficiency.

The issue of frequency coverage itself is also worth further discussion. While the rhombic is very broad banded, especially the non-resonant terminated antenna, in

my hands when optimized for 14Mhz, the antenna is still useful from 10 through 18 Mhz. On the higher bands (18-30 Mhz), the main beam becomes unaccepably "split" with less effective gain in the resulting lobes in the azimuth plane. The antenna is still useful but limited. Perhaps the answer is to build the larger rhombics with smaller antennas that are optimized for the higher frequencies supported at a lower height from the 4 support poles. The rhombics work well when "nested" in this manner and you can conserve space in this way. Additionally, if you get really carried away, you can use the side poles as ends for other rhombics and vica versa. You can even "stack" rhombics running in different directions with clearances of anything greater than 5 feet on HF. Yes, there is a slight degradation but big rhombics are such good antennas that in the real world you shouldn't care. Designs have been built where rhombics are phased together so that in a given direction, one or more rhombics are fed in phase.

While amateur radio operators today largely employ rotating array antennas such as the Yagi dipole array and the cubical quad antenna, some still use wire antennas, some of which can afford higher gain and lower receive noise characteristics. In fact, the rhombic antenna is usually described as the "King of antennas" because of it's very desireable characteristics. The rhombic antenna is basically a diamond-shaped wire curtain that is made of 4 wires, each several wavelengths long connected to form a "diamond" or rhombus shape . The diamond is constructed with the narrowest ends left open for the feed point on one end and a non-inductive resistive termination on the other. This creates the terminated (also called nonresonant) rhombic which is a unidirectional antenna with broad bandwidth. Non-terminated (also called resonant) rhombics do work but have narrower useful bandwidth and are bidirectional (non-resonant rhombics are fed on one end and the opposite end is left open. In my experience both nonresonant and resonant rhombics work quite well. All wire antennas tend to be less "noisy" on receive and longer antennas like the rhombic are very low noise antennas with the solitary exception of precipitation static (snow and rain add small charges to the curtain and you get very high noise under such conditions). Precipitation static can be minimized by using termination resistors with a grounded center tap (leaks static to ground continuously). The sides of the rhombic (with the broadest included angle) are constructed of differing dimensions to determine what radiation angle will be obtained. Half of the angle included by the

rhombic side is called the "tilt angle" or theta and as the tilt angle is varied, the radiation angle will also vary. There exist various ways to calculate the ideal tilt angle to choose relative to the radiation angle and gain desired for a given rhombic application. Generally the tilt angle is between 65 and 75 degrees. The apex angle is the angle included by the feed point end of the rhombic and is between 30 and 50 degrees and varies with the tilt angle (the sum of half the apex angle and the tilt angle will be 90). Height is very important for rhombics, as it is for all antennas. Basically, the radiation angle of the main beam of any antenna is related to the height above the ground and the ground characteristics. Generally, for any antenna the following height (in wavelengths)/wave angle (degrees) relationships hold: 0.5/30; 1.0/15; 1.5/8; 2.0/6; 3.0/5. As you can see, to take advantage of the rhombic's extraordinary gain for distant (low angle) communications, you will need to have the antenna at least 1.5 wavelengths high: on 14.0 Mhz, this is around 90 feet, the "usual" height used for rhombic antennas (most rhombics used are in amateur radio usually optimized for 14 Mhz or 20 meter band). Rhombic antennas are generally fed with open feedlines of around 400 to 600 ohm impedance. This is not critical and any issues related to feeder loss and/or standing wave ratios pales in significance in relationship to this antenna's gain. In the real world things work fine without worry related to feedlines so long as you use a good antenna tuner. Use of baluns is probably unwise as this is likely to limit the useful frequency range of this intrinsically broadbanded antenna. Many commercial applications of the rhombic use what are called "exponential feeders" with the nominal impedance being 300 ohms at the feeder end and with the paired feedlines gradually spreading to a spacing of around 12 inches at the rhombic feedpoint (a distance calculated to provide the rhombic feedpoint impedance of 600-800 ohms). The exponential feeder provides a smooth transition of impedance and acts as a sort of impedance transformer. In current antenna publications it seems very hard to find anything other than a very abbreviated discussion of rhombics and perhaps some basic design charts and dimensions for a simple rhombic. Little discussion is generally available of the more complex details important to anyone seriously interested in constructing a rhombic antenna. With this in mind, this page has some images of real-world installations and discussion of most of the important practical details you would need to be aware of to construct and maintain a proper rhombic. I am always interested in hearing from anyone with experience with building, maintaining or using rhombics.

Images, plan sets and even parts from dismantled rhombics are of interest to me. I will add anything to this page that fits, and then some.
A rhombic antenna is a broadbanddirectional antenna co-invented by Edmond Bruce and Harald Friis,[1] mostly commonly used in HF (high frequency, also calledshortwave) ranges.