Thinking about getting this

Kel, it's pretty obvious you missed something here:
"I have very limited room for anything here. The verticals will be 1/4 wave."

Now why erect something HIGHER than my favorite vertical? I did a bit of math to find the height of quarter waves, they certainly won't require guys sooo...
"The grounded folded monopole if you've been following my recommendations is an electrical half wave a tad shorter than a quarter wave high so that's the way to go if you lack a high support or room for guys."
It would make a funny looking flagpole, I've never seen a lanyard spaced 12-15" from the pole. (;->)

What I'm thinking about doing is putting up two 1/4 wave verticals 1/4 wavelength apart and building a little phasor. I can adjust the phase delay between the two for optimum signal in the direction of the station I want to work, or use one or the other for non-directional operation. Not a bad idea, especially considering I'll only have a watt at my disposal. Great for cutting out QRM as well.

Check the Startrek web site for phasor plans.

Using that approach the electrical wavelength of the antennas is not important, the spacing and phase delay makes all the difference. Since the feed point impedance of a series fed 1/4 wave isn't always 50 ohms and varies a bit seasonally you still may need a couple of the ham versions of the tuning house, the dog house. Now you'll need a couple of dogs...

You reminded me that Phil K2PG built the same arrangement for 40M at his Iselin, NJ QTH a whole lot of years ago using coaxial delay lines. When I was growing up in Rahway, NJ there was a landmark in the next town Clark, 2 130' masts made of pipe and it's not hard to figure out what they were for. Then there were the biggest ones in the area, a couple of 208' pipes on a hill opposite the Union toll plaza on the Parkway, WNJR. They're all gone today, Phil moved, the Clark ham went SK and WNJR moved too, all around the same time.

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Originally Posted by kb2vxa

Using that approach the electrical wavelength of the antennas is not important, the spacing and phase delay makes all the difference. Since the feed point impedance of a series fed 1/4 wave isn't always 50 ohms and varies a bit seasonally you still may need a couple of the ham versions of the tuning house, the dog house. Now you'll need a couple of dogs...

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This is very true. Also, if I used two masts and shunt fed them I wouldn't have to worry about insulating the bases. The matching networks would be interesting but easy to build at 14 mHz.

I'm probably going to use a Raspberry Pi to run the radio and simply use a WiFi dongle. Connect directly to the dongle and SSH right into the Pi. That means I can put the radio and the Pi right where the antenna is, in a weatherproof box and all I need to do is supply power to it, which I can do with solar panels and a car battery (probably will use the same setup that powered all our stuff while we were camping last month). I could even use varactor diodes and the GPIO port on the Pi to tune the array.

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You reminded me that Phil K2PG built the same arrangement for 40M at his Iselin, NJ QTH a whole lot of years ago using coaxial delay lines. When I was growing up in Rahway, NJ there was a landmark in the next town Clark, 2 130' masts made of pipe and it's not hard to figure out what they were for. Then there were the biggest ones in the area, a couple of 208' pipes on a hill opposite the Union toll plaza on the Parkway, WNJR. They're all gone today, Phil moved, the Clark ham went SK and WNJR moved too, all around the same time.

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Very cool. Having worked on AM arrays for so many years, LC networks are my first choice. But the coax delay line idea is intriguing. I do want to be able to swing the array around to any angle though, so I will likely go with the LC networks for phase control.

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Originally Posted by KKM

OK.. I see they have a 40 and 20 meter version. I'm leaning toward 20 meters. What do you all think? Which band would you choose? I'm mostly interested in doing PSK with people I know stateside, but DX also interests me.

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40 meters because anything 8 mc and above is inherently evil.

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Originally Posted by K7SGJ

Check the Startrek web site for phasor plans.

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Uh... I was looking at the sthar thweck websthite and ah...

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Originally Posted by KKM

I have very limited room for anything here. The verticals will be 1/4 wave. I definitely have no room for a dipole. I had one for 30 meters but it required an extraordinary amount of support to wrap it around the house and under the power lines and it did not perform that well. The verticals I can run up near the side of the house and I have plenty of stuff to use as ground. So verticals it is. If I had trees in the front yard I could run a dipole from the front yard, over the house to one of the trees in the back, but unfortunately that's not an option. A properly cut vertical won't need a tuner at least on the band it's designed for, but even if it does, that doesn't bother me. Most of my antenna's have required a tuner and really there is very little loss from using a tuner.

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Do you have at least 1 tall tree ? If so build an inverted vee doublet. I use one. They work great.

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Originally Posted by n2ize

40 meters because anything 8 mc and above is inherently evil.

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Cranky old fart... :roll:

I was thinking about building a Startrek phasor but I'll leave that to Stewie, Startek however is more in line with Amateur Radio. (;->)

Yanno Kel, you come up with some FABULOUS ideas and you're sure headed in the right direction. Uh huh, LC networks ARE first choice because (for the sake of lesser than ham gods such as ourselves) they give "infinite" phase rotation rather than a few switchable patterns given with coaxial delay lines. One thing however, I'm trying to steer you toward grounded folded unipole antennas rather than quarter wave no matter how they're fed because those are not only shorter but more importantly as electrical half waves they spit at lower angles, you know the advantage. You only have a watt, less than a watt ERP so you have to gain all the advantage you can and I see a greater advantage in a combination of the two.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sy_JXPixTRA