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How can I measure how much power is output from a receiving antenna when another, physically adjacent antenna is transmitting?

I have a VHF/UHF collinear vertical antenna connected to a transceiver with 50W RF output. It is physically very close (~1m) to an End-fed Half-wave wire antenna which is connected to an SDRPlay RSPdx-R2 receiver. The maximum input power for this receiver is 0dBm. How can I know that I will not damage the receiver when the transceiver is transmitting? I have a nanoVNA and a 20dB attenuator, is it possible to use these to measure the level coming from the EFHW??

Thanks for any advice.

73 de M9LCD

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    $\begingroup$ What's the operating frequency of the half wave antenna? $\endgroup$ Commented Dec 5, 2025 at 13:12
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    $\begingroup$ Is the end fed antenna also placed in vertical polarization? $\endgroup$ Commented Dec 5, 2025 at 13:12
  • $\begingroup$ The EFHW is resonant on 40m, 20m, 15m and 10m. Horizontal polarization. The vertical colinear is reasonant on 6m, 2m and 70cm (type is Diamond V2000). $\endgroup$ Commented Dec 5, 2025 at 20:46

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Two HF/VHF/70cm antennas coming within 1m of each other is very tricky, especially in your situation. I would maximize the separation as the first measure. Your endfed is horizontal, so that much is good, but when you have to come down by 47dB to be safe, that alone is not sufficient.

First, measurement. NanoVNA is the wrong tool for this. You just need a very sensitive wideband micro power meter that can measure down to -20dBm or so. You could build one using a chip like AD8310, AD8319, or maybe AD8314, coupled with an attenuator. (My knowledge here is a few years old - check the latest spec sheets when selecting your chip and the design.) If you would rather buy something more versatile, TinySA Ultra would be my first choice, also with an attenuator. Start measurement with the lower power transmit and increase the power until you can get reliable readings. Then calculate the "link loss" between your antennas.

The high-frequency behavior of an end-fed half-wave antenna is very unreliable/variable and susceptible to many things. I generally do not recommend using a half-wave antenna on higher bands if performance is any concern. In this context, that gets back to you as an uncertainty or unpredictability.

One good thing is that the 49:1 type transformer is very lousy, especially at higher frequencies, so you may already see attenuation when you transmit at 50MHz and even more so at higher frequencies. But that is also unreliable and unpredictable because those transformers are never designed for higher frequencies, and self-resonance and other factors can come into play.

Therefore, my recommendation is to insert an LPF with a cutoff frequency of 33 MHz or so in front of your SDR receiver. This is fairly easy to design and construct. Additionally, I would add a warning system using AD8310 or 8319 to cut off the antenna connection via a PIN diode or a small signal relay(1) when the receive antenna power exceeds 0 dBm. This should also be fairly straightforward to design and construct. (I would just do strictly analog electronics design rather than a microprocessor, so that the cutoff can be fast and reliable.)

(1) In fact, for this application, you could just use a regular switching diode since the signal amplitude is tiny.

ADDENDUM

The LPF can be as simple as this. It's a prototype I built (just used standard capacitors and inductors as wound, without any tweaking) and measured. This would be good enough for this application, as it has 50dB attenuation at 52MHz and 145MHz (though that could be further fine-tuned, as the filter is based on an elliptical function). (S11 is not ideal but good enough for a lot of applications, including this one.)

LPF Schematic

(This is something I did for a completely unrelated project in 2023, and I'm showing it only as an example... it is probably good enough for your application as-is, but it has room for customization/improvement from an overall system performance perspective.)

Low-pass filter prototype Measurement of that filter, mostly passband and transition band

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  • $\begingroup$ Why not just connect one port of the the NanoVNA to the two antennas, and measure S21 over the range of likely VUHF transmit frequencies. 50 W is 47 dBm so you need S21 to be <-47 dB which is within the dynamic range of a NanoVNA. I agree about the LPF, that's good practice. And about the unpredictability, you can't have the EFHW blowing in the wind later. $\endgroup$ Commented Dec 6, 2025 at 3:12
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    $\begingroup$ @tomnexus The receive antenna will pick up strong broadcast and other signals besides the signal from the VNA and the measurement dynamic range and the noise floor will be impacted. That technique may work in some cases but I would not trust it unless verified by more reliable means.. and in that case may not provide useful info in this scenario where the quantity needed is simply |S21| only. $\endgroup$ Commented Dec 6, 2025 at 3:39
  • $\begingroup$ “lousy” -> “lossy”? $\endgroup$ Commented Dec 6, 2025 at 20:11
  • $\begingroup$ 49:1 transformers have a poor match, a transformation ratio deviation, and increased loss at higher frequencies. $\endgroup$ Commented Dec 7, 2025 at 1:53
  • $\begingroup$ Thanks for all your input. I will try an insertion loss measurement with the nanoVNA, but more out of interest than as a hard and fast solution. The LPF seems like the best solution for me. $\endgroup$ Commented Dec 8, 2025 at 10:22

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