About Blueprints & Signals
An independent, educational reference for amateur radio. No products, no sponsorship, no affiliate links.
What this site is
Blueprints & Signals is a reference library for amateur radio operators and for people who are thinking about becoming one. It covers the equipment that makes up a station, the calculations that govern it, and the principles behind both.
The site is organised around five equipment families and five stages of a station build, so that someone starting from nothing has a route through the material rather than a list of unrelated pages.
What it deliberately is not
- Not a shop. Nothing on this site is for sale, and there are no affiliate links, sponsored placements or advertising.
- Not a brand endorsement. No manufacturer pays for a mention. Where a specification is quoted, it is quoted as a representative figure for the class of equipment, not as a recommendation of a particular model.
- Not a promise of performance. No communication distance, contact or result is guaranteed anywhere on this site. Propagation, terrain and local conditions decide what is possible, and none of them are under our control.
- Not a substitute for your equipment manual or your licence conditions. Where the two disagree, they win.
Educational content
Figures, formulae and settings are given to illustrate principles. They are not measurements of your installation.
Safety first
RF exposure, high voltage and antenna work are flagged throughout. Read the safety notes before the specifications.
Free interactive tools
Four 3D models and three calculators, all free, with no account required and no data collected.
How the content is written
Specifications are given as typical values for the class of equipment, with the reasoning behind them. Where a figure depends on conditions — feedline loss, for instance, which depends on frequency, cable type and length — the dependencies are stated rather than hidden behind a single number.
The interactive tools are simplified models. They are built to make a principle visible, and they say so on every page. They are not antenna modelling software and should not be used as one.