Hi, I hope this post/question is okay - I’m doing some art that includes various radio antennas and I’d really like to run them past someone who knows more than I do to make sure they look okay.
I’m working on location art for a solarpunk TTRPG campaign and am doing a scene for a somewhat old fashioned (in this setting), heavily automated farm. The guy who lives here does a lot of the work maintaining a meshnet in the mostly-abandoned town where the campaign takes place. I figure he’s also sort of generally a tinkerer and has probably amassed a decent assortment of old tech.
The last time I was working on a scene with antennas I asked the folks over on r/hamradio for advice and they were super helpful so I reused a lot of the antennas from before, and tried to scale them to match that scene and to photographs I’ve seen, but I’m definitely not knowledgeable on this stuff and am happy to make changes to get it right.
As before, I really just want to make sure it doesn’t look offensively dumb to folks in the ham radio scene, and if you have any recommendations for antennas you’d like to see or that would say something interesting, I’d be happy to include them. Thanks for any advice you feel like giving!
I think this looks excellent, if I drove by that house I’d definitely think a ham lived there. Probably the first door I’d knock on if I were in desperate need of a vacuum tube. The inclusion of many types and sizes of antennas also reinforces that this is some kind of core site for the mesh network infrastructure that this guy is maintaining. I think a cantenna fed dish or a dipole strung across some trees would fit nicely in this scene as well, especially if you’re looking for an amateur or distressed quality. This setup looks nicely put together and organized.
This sounds like a really interesting setting! I hope your party is into it. I also really like the art style of this image. It’s like an impressionist diagram in an old technical manual.
You’ll also commonly see a yagi like that on some kind of rotor so it can point around in azimuth, and sometimes elevation. Here’s a reference on a similar tower to what you’ve depicted.
Also is that a drone swarm flying out of the top window? That’s so cool!
It is! On a previous project I read up a bunch on agricultural UAVs and how some farms even send out multiple passes with different types of drones before going out in person to inspect an issue, and I fell in love with the idea of a farmer adding a sort of drone hangar to their barn. It’s probably not a realistic amount of UAVs but I love the visual of drones just pouring out like bats.
That’s super cool, like a technological aviary. I’m imagining a Ghibli-like scene with uavs starting their day, streaming out of the attic in the early morning with melancholy piano in the background. They’re up in the attic bantering like the attic of the post office in Baldurs Gate 3. That’s a great detail!
Thank you so much! I can definitely add the cantenna dish - should it be pointed in any particular direction?
Whatever you’re trying to look at, terrestrial to terrestrial link or for satcom (or drone tracking antennas!) is common. The dishes with an offset feed like I liked to have the main beam pointed up relative to the perpendicular of the dish. So you may see it tilted up but not straight into the sky. This is a common arrangement for things like satellite tv service which are quite common and often repurposed for ham and other uses. You’ll also see a cantenna feed on center fed dishes, think like a big deep space dish or a radio telescope type. Those do point perpendicular to the dish.
Thanks! How’s this look? I added one to the barn and one to the house, pointed in different directions.
Missing a few high power repurposed military antennas like old ASIP ones from the 1960s. Those would be cheap af and easy to mod IRL. What i see are renditions of commercial VHF/UHF ones and they don’t look too bad.
Your art looks phenomenal!
Thanks so much! That sounds great (and pretty cyberpunk) so I’d love to add them but ‘ASIP military antenna 1960s’ isn’t finding me much at first glance - could you link an image so I can reference it while looking for examples?
Apologies, I tried to Google SINCGARS radio (ASIP was actuallythe battery acronym) antennas to find something for you that I remember, but all I can find are the whip antennas the dismounted units used, not the tubular thick ones.
But honestly, they are nothing too fancy, because it required even the most Simple Jack of single brain-celled Privates to setup and weren’t aesthetically notable because they were designed to be simple and easily camouflaged.
Your can disregard adding them. But I’ll keep looking around and will edit this post with a link if I find an image Im referring to.
Thanks! I’d appreciate it! And I’ll read up on them anyways because I find military history and the way kit gets adapted and upgraded very interesting
Looks great! It’s lacking a a few random wires going hither and tither though, and a few random junction boxes of unknown purpose around the house and roof. No antenna farm is this neat.
That’s good to know! I can definitely add some electrical clutter!
I’ve got no input for the post because I came here from all, but I just wanted to say I love that picture! It’s got some awesome vibes to it; I’m not too into ttrpgs but that’s a theme that’s right up my alley! Good luck with developing your world. It looks like you’ve got a great start
Thanks! I really love working in this style, it’s a sort of photobash/collage and it’s an absolute blast. I really enjoy doing rural cyberpunk scenes - I actually did a very short webcomic in the same style and similar setting. The single panel ones might hit the same vibe for you.
The one on the tower looks like a Moonraker CB antenna. The elements on those were horizontal to the ground.
