InnovAntennas
| InnovAntennas | |
|---|---|
| Type | Private company (InnovAntennas Ltd) |
| Founded | 2010 or 2011 (sources differ) |
| Founder | Justin Johnson, G0KSC |
| Headquarters | Canvey Island, Essex, England |
| Amateur radio | |
| Known for | LFA (Loop Fed Array) Yagis and other G0KSC designs, HF to 23 cm |
| Status | Active |
| Website | innovantennas.com |
InnovAntennas is a British antenna maker based on Canvey Island in Essex, England, founded by the antenna designer Justin Johnson, G0KSC. It builds Yagis and other directional antennas from the HF bands up to 23 centimeters for amateur, commercial and government users. It is best known for the LFA, or Loop Fed Array, a Yagi design in which the driven element is a rectangular loop instead of a straight dipole.
History
Before starting the company, Johnson was known for his Yagi designs, including design work for the American beam maker Force 12. Other hams began asking him to build antennas to his designs, and this demand grew into InnovAntennas. Sources disagree on the founding year: the company's own website says 2010, while a January 2012 press release and a later magazine profile give 2011. Production was set up in a former boat factory on Canvey Island.
In January 2012 R&L Electronics of Hamilton, Ohio, became the first dealer for InnovAntennas in the United States. The company then set up an American arm, InnovAntennas America, in Grand Junction, Colorado.
On December 30, 2013, InnovAntennas bought Force 12. Force 12 production moved from Bridgeport, Texas, to the Grand Junction premises shared with InnovAntennas America, and Force 12 antennas for European customers were to be built on Canvey Island. The Force 12 line later passed to JK Antennas, and the InnovAntennas website no longer mentions it. As of 2026 the company names DX Engineering as its exclusive North American distributor and WiMo as its distributor in Europe.
Designs
LFA
In an ordinary Yagi, the driven element is a straight dipole fed at its center. In the LFA, the driven element is a long, narrow loop that stretches along the boom and is fed directly, without a separate matching network. The company says this arrangement gives a cleaner pattern with smaller side lobes, so the antenna picks up less noise from directions other than the one it points at. That matters most for weak-signal work on VHF and UHF, such as moonbounce, meteor scatter and 6-meter DXing. A 2012 company press release said that G0KSC designs ranked highly for their boom length in a survey of EME antennas compiled by VE7BQH.
Other designs
- OP-DES (Opposing Phase Driven Element System): a multiband driven-element arrangement used to cover several bands on one boom with one feed line.
- OWL: another family of Yagis in the company's range.
- LFA-Q: quad-style versions of the loop-fed design.
Amateur radio products
The amateur range runs from HF monoband and multiband beams through 6 meters, 2 meters and 70 centimeters up to 23 centimeters, with long-boom models aimed at EME and other weak-signal operating.