Is a good affordable yagi available for router

Lots of yagi antennas on the market. I see them from $10US on up to nearly $200 and they all look like they came out of the same factory mold, that is about 1/2" or 1.2cm square aluminum pole with small elements about the size of pencil eraser and metal holder that stick out protruding from the square aluminum "tube" all down the line. Now most antennas I have seen designed for other spectrums and for other applications do not have a metal mast hosting the elements, which to me seems a questionable design because in this case the mast width is about a forth of the entire wavelength at 2.4Ghz (uneducated guess). So what's the scoop here?

I find that buying these off eBay out of those I have purchased, about one out of 4 that will transmit a signal stronger than with a 9db omni antenna. So what am I missing first of all, and others find the same results with this type of design of yagi, believing most of them are poor performers and only a few off the production line really work?

Secondly I would like to ask what inexpensive yagi antenna can anyone recommend who has actually tested them and believe a particular model or style will be the better preforming?

Most of the "eBay specials" are junk. Most of the "eBay" feed lines are crap as well, negating any potential gains you'd get even if the antenna was any good.

In my experience, unless you've got the skills and equipment to be able to fabricate and tune your own, decent antennas from reputable manufacturers run US $50 or up, and expect to pay $30-50 for a couple meters of good feed line with reputable connectors that have been properly attached (Times Microwave "LMR" or better cabling).

In the past I've used L-Com for antennas and had good luck. I fabricate my own feed lines as I have the tooling for the LMR cables and commercial-grade fittings.

Microwave is indeed tricky due to the precision needed. But at this frequency I don't think Yagis are the way to go to get a directional beam, there are dish antennas that are going to do a better job I think:

haven't actually tested this, but it seems likely that it's easier to manufacture these well than a yagi. That parabolic reflector just needs to get pressed into a mold for example.

+1 to the recommendations on buying decent feed-line. Also if possible use PoE to get your transmitter close to the antenna, and then minimize the actual microwave feed line length.

I will agree it will be hard to find a better antenna than you have identified here, as I use one of these on a pole at campsites when in my camper and the performance is phenomenal.

But I should have qualified my request as needing something that will fit in a suitcase when traveling. Thank you!

Have you tried a corner reflector behind a standard omni? Maybe not going to be as good as a well made yagi, but on the other hand you can make it with two pieces of cardboard and a sheet of aluminum foil and a glue stick, and it's pretty portable :wink:

It's also cheap and cheerful enough to try out yourself for almost no money. If you do, please let me know how it goes. I've used this technique in the past to improve directionality on travel routers, basically place the travel router in front of a jury rigged reflector so that the radiation pattern is hopefully more in the desired direction, i'd be surprised if you couldn't add 3 to 5 dB to an omni using this technique and hand-tuning the distances.

If you want to try building your own Yagi you should check out this guys YouTube channel, He has built or reviewed quite a few yogi's ~20 probably more, I'm pretty sure he also has downloadable plans so that you can build them.

He has made so many different types of antennas I did not have time to count them, Probably over a 1000.

https://www.youtube.com/user/8bitandrewmcneil/videos

EDIT:
If you want to check all his yagi posts try this seach when your in YouTube

yagi "andrew mcneil"

Some of his antennas are built by making his ows PCB boards for better precision.