A compact passive helical GPS antenna with an SMA Male connector, designed to give your Meshtastic™ or MeshCore™ node a stronger GNSS fix outdoors. Multi-constellation reception across GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, and BeiDou makes it equally at home on a fixed solar node, a handheld build, or a drone.
Key Benefits
- 📡 Multi-Constellation GNSS Covers 1559–1602 MHz, which captures GPS L1, GLONASS L1, Galileo E1, and BeiDou B1 for more satellites in view and faster cold-start lock times than a GPS-L1-only antenna.
- 🔄 Helical, Not Patch A helical radiation pattern works in any orientation — important for handhelds, vehicle-mounted nodes, and drones where a flat-sky patch antenna would lose lock when tilted. Mount it sideways, upside down, or on the move; it keeps working.
- 🛡️ Sealed for Outdoor Use A black rubber O-ring at the base compresses against your enclosure for a weather-tight bulkhead seal. The helix itself is fully enclosed in a black plastic radome, so there are no exposed elements to corrode or snag.
The SMA Male end has a center pin with an outer-threaded shell. It screws directly into any SMA Female (SMA-F) bulkhead — including the GPS bulkhead position on the Atlavox Beacon's antenna rail, or any custom Meshtastic build with an SMA Female GPS exit.
Passive antenna — here's what that means for you: This antenna has no built-in amplifier and draws no power. It's designed to work with GPS modules that have their own internal LNA, which is exactly how the RAK12500 (u-blox ZOE-M8Q) and RAK12501 (Quectel L76K) are built. For best performance with a passive antenna, keep the coax run between your GPS module and this antenna under about 1 meter (3 feet) — long cable runs add signal loss that an active antenna would compensate for.
Compatibility
- Screws directly onto the Atlavox Beacon antenna rail (SMA-F cutout), and can connect to the BLE/GPS SMA port on the enclosure if you're not using an external Bluetooth antenna. Alternatively, you can drill an additional hole through your enclosure to install another SMA to iPEX cable to connect to your GPS module inside.
- Pairs with the RAK12500 (u-blox ZOE-M8Q) and RAK12501 (Quectel L76K) when you replace the onboard chip antenna using an iPEX-F to SMA-F pigtail cable to bring the GPS signal to an external SMA bulkhead.
- Works with any DIY Meshtastic™ or MeshCore™ build that has an SMA Female GPS port and uses a passive-antenna-compatible GPS module (most modern u-blox and Quectel GNSS chips with internal LNAs qualify).
- Compatible with FPV drones, quadcopters, and other airborne platforms that use a standard SMA Female GPS input — the helical pattern is especially well-suited to airframes that constantly change orientation in flight.
- Not compatible with RP-SMA GPS ports (rare on GPS modules, but worth checking).
