this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2026
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Nope. Or rather, you can, but it won't work like you think it will, and at the very least will result in overall poor performance and at worst may damage the device.
I think the fundamental problem here is the term "gain." Antennas don't have actual gain, they merely sacrifice radiation in some directions to provide more radiation in others. You don't magically get more radiated energy by adding antennas, regardless of their published gain figures.
id imagine it isn't as simple as splicing the antenna wires, just wondered if there is an easier way to have a dual antenna setup, than just using two esp32 boards for each antenna
As far as the physical connection is concerned, you need a coaxial splitter that is rated for use at 900 MHz. They exist but cost a few bucks.
The thing is, your signal strength at each antenna will be half the total output of the LORA device, minus the loss in the splitter. It will provide less effective range than a single antenna.
The fact is: in almost every situation, a simple ground plane antenna will do as well or even outperform any fancy antenna setup. The only exception is if you really only want signal going in one direction, in which case you want a yagi. The only time it makes sense to drive more than one antenna at a time is in a phased array system (a specialized directional antenna system), which really doesn't make sense for Meshtastic.