Hoe maak je een RF verzwakker, Attenuator “10 euro”

What is an Attenuator
An attenuator is effectively the opposite of an amplifier, basically an attenuator is an electronic device that reduces the power of a signal without distorting its waveform. An attenuator is usually used in audio or RF, but can also be used in other areas of electronics and it can be fixed or variable.

How to make an RF attenuator low cost

The resistor
For our homemade experiments a professional RF attenuator is not necessary, if we work with frequencies up to UHF band can use ordinary resistors, and three common enough resistors to build an attenuator. We must remember that we can not use inductive resistors, as resistors and others end, but we can use the metal film. For the transmission of RF low-power can use the common resistors 1/4 provided with good dissipation not to burn them.

The dissipation
An important point is the heat dissipation, We can use some techniques to build the sink attenuator, how to attach the resistor to an aluminum heatsink for transistor, assembling in a container with coolant, mount fans, etc.

Attenuation
Maybe you need an attenuator few dBs, and then a big attenuator, it does not matter, you can use the table below which has options 1 dB a 20 dB. But if you have doubts about dB, is an article with a conversion table dBm Watts x x Volts which will make your life easier for the calculations.

How to make a Fixed Attenuator RF
The most popular types of attenuators with resistors are the types T and PI. The resistance values of attenuation are given in the table below. The identification of the resistor in the table refers to the number in scheme.

Om de weerstanden en je verzwakking (db) uit te rekenen zijn diverse site oa.

http://n9zia.ampr.org/att_pad.main.cgi
http://blog.novaeletronica.com.br/en/tabela-de-atenuador-de-rf-com-resistores/
https://www.everythingrf.com/rf-calculators/attenuator-calculator

Foto’s van het maken : Een variabele RF verzwakker