Advantages of turnstile antenna | disadvantages of turnstile antenna
This page covers advantages and disadvantages of turnstile antenna and its basics. It mentions benefits or advantages of turnstile antenna and drawbacks or disadvantages of turnstile antenna.
What is turnstile antenna?
It is one type of array antenna which operates in 30MHz to 3GHz frequency range. In order to achieve higher directivity, several turnstiles are used together. Turnstile antenna operates in various modes such as normal mode and axial mode. In normal mode, it radiates horizontally polarized waves where as in axial mode, it radiates circularly polarized waves.
The turnstile antennas are used for various applications which include VHF communications, FM broadcasting, military communications, satellite communications etc.

The figure depicts double turnstile antenna. As shown in the structure, it uses two dipoles placed at right angle to each other. One dipole is connected to 90o phasing cable for quadrature connection. It uses additional set of dipoles as per specific requirements. Mast of insulating materials such as PVC pipe or Wooden dowel is used.
Benefits or advantages of turnstile antenna
Following are the benefits or advantages of turnstile antenna:
➨It is simple to construct as it uses two linear dipoles.
➨It offers higher gain when multiple turnstile antennas are stacked together. For example, Super-turnstile antenna.
➨It offers better directivity.
Drawbacks or disadvantages of turnstile antenna
Following are the drawbacks or disadvantages of turnstile antenna:
➨It offers poor near the horizon performance.
➨It offers high image quality in +/-30o field of view about vertical.
➨It's radiation power is about 3 dB less compare to max. radiation of λ/2 dipole transmitting same amout of power.
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