All good info, but I'd still like to know how you feel your antennas perform.
What's the average distance you can cover comfortably? What distances do you seem to have trouble with?
Indoor antenna (I.E. attic dipole)
Single wire antenna less 25 feet high
Single wire antenna, 35-50 feet high
Single wire antenna more than 50 feet high
2 or more wire antennas, all under 35 feet high
2 or more wire antennas, 35-50 feet high
2 or more wire antennas, all higher than 50 feet
Single tower with tri-bander, 30-50 feet high
Single tower with tri-bander, more than 50 feet high
More than one tower, with several mono-banders
All good info, but I'd still like to know how you feel your antennas perform.
What's the average distance you can cover comfortably? What distances do you seem to have trouble with?
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With PSK on 30 meters, depending on propagation, I can hit Russia, down as far as Brazil. I seem pretty deaf north, however, and east past CA is challenging to say the least.Originally Posted by KJ3N
Hitting North America is no problem, Europe can be troublesome, and I need propagation working with me.
Facing the fact that the CQWW CW contest was approaching, I decided to operate 15M single band last year. To do this, I was thinking about using my little HyGain tri bander, but it has issues and rather than tear down the traps in that thing, I put up a K5RP antenna for 15M. K5RP was basically designed to be a vertically polarized antenna, but it was also designed with 40M in mind. To make it a horizontally polarized antenna for 40M, it would be very high, but to make it horizontally polarized for 15M was not that daunting of a task. So that is what I did. I was able to get it about 45 feet at the top and just periodically getting on and making contacts, I made 20 zones and 53 countries. Nothing close to what I was hoping I'd do, but much of my time was babysitting grandkids. About the only contacts I made out west was to KL and KH. Everything was the Americas, Africa and Europe.
EDIT: Winter storms have played havoc on the antenna and I have not kept it in repair. So at the moment, I am off the air. If I get a weekend where I can get out, I will be putting up a home brew vertical made out of aluminum tubing from roof snow rakes.
Last edited by X-Rated; 02-07-2013 at 10:08 AM.
Centerfed ZEPP.
"Friendships come in strange packages
The best ones are opened with a smile"
NA4BH '15
Lengthened OCF 160-10 at 45 feet.
5 element 6 meter beam.
11 element Flexa yagi 2 meter.
23 element Flxa yagi 70 cm
Vertical 77 feet high 160 -20 meters top also 23 meters long sloping from 23 meter down to 11 meter above ground autotuner MFJ998.
Imax 2000 17 -10 meters.( rebuild)
Diamond X 510 vertical 2/70
Diamond discone antenna
Homebrew 18 dBD wi-fi vertical antenna 7 feet long.
Homebrew amplified loop antenna 10 kHZ - 30 MHz.
"If the Republicans will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop
telling the truth about them." - Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965)
“I’m not liberal/conservative, I’m anti-idiotarian.”
At some point in the last 20 years, the left moved to the center, and the right moved into a mental institution
I love centerfolds.
Wire antennas: Meh. The G5RV jr. is too short and the 40m dipole is too low to really work well.
V/UHF verticals: 6m J-pole is excellent for local stuff, which is all I wanted it for. 2m J-pole works, but does not perform as well as it should and I've never been able to figure out why. 220 MHz co-linear J-pole kills. I can hit the Catalina Island repeater over 100 miles away with 18 watts. The 70 cm vertical...well, it works as well as I need it to work.
10m Moxon: Works surprisingly well for something I put together out of twenty bucks worth of PVC pipe and 14 gauge THHN picked up at the Home Despot, on par with a 2 element Yagi. Maybe 6 dB gain and an impressive F/B ratio.
All that said, I've managed to use the digital modes to work stations covering a large portion of the world: west into Japan and eastern Asia, Australia, New Zealand and Oceania is easy, ditto South America. Europe is tougher, I can only get there when conditions are very good. I've gotten as far east as the Ural Mountains in Russia while working grayline on 40m one evening. No African QSOs as of yet and none into Asia Minor or India.
All the world’s a stage, but obviously the play is unrehearsed and everybody is ad-libbing his lines. Maybe that’s why it’s hard to tell if we’re living in a tragedy or a farce.
I moved here about six month ago and so far only have installed...
A "dipole doublet" fed with ladder line for 80-6 meters. Feedpoint is up about 60'. One leg slopes down at about 30 degrees from horizontal, the other is flat. It's a bit close to the house and I pop some RFI into cheap electronics in the house when I run power. Other than that, it works really well. I've worked Africa, Europe, Asia, Oceania, barefoot. Mostly SSB. Got Jan Mayen Island last week.
So... it performs pretty well for a temporary antenna. It's actually the dipole setup I take along for camping and Field Day.
50/144/440 Mhz Comet vertical on a temporary mast strapped to the balcony, about 50' up from ground
144/440 horizontal loop underneath the vertical on the same mast, about 40' up from ground.
Have 7-440 MHz mobile with hamsticks and a vhf/uhf antenna setup in the Previa van. I also have a 30' portable mast that works with a Superantenna Yagi for camping. Armstrong rotator system works fine.
What's NOT setup, but will be:
Gap Titan vertical, which I have used a lot in the past. 40-10, it does a good job.
Gap Challenger vertical, plan to put it up and phase it on 40-30-20 with the Titan.
40' aluminum tower, 144/440 5/6 element beam, may get a Hexbeam to share the tower.
50' tilting fiberglass military mast that will go on the balcony, winch to tilt it with. VHF/UHF maybe, but I am considering bulting a K9AY loop array and make that the RX antenna... sharing the pole with a VHF/UHF/FM TV antenna. I've played with the TV antenna on the balcony rail, and I can pick up a lot more outlying HD radio and TV stations...
160 meter doublet fed with ladder line to the ground, remote switch to short the feedline and run it as a vertical. Very beefy DX engineering balun at the base switched in and out with coax back to the shack. I already have the coax run, and one support rope up. Will need to run radials for the vertical part, so it will see service as a doublet first.
But it snowed, and I've been busy skiing.
"Where would we be without the agitators of the world to attach the electrodes
of knowledge to the nipples of ignorance?" ~ Professor "Dick" Soloman
I'm down to the OCF Dipole at about 40 feet in my tree and 20' at the ends. Europe, South America and North America have been no problem with this antenna. Everyplace else sucks. I noticed the same thing when I had my Butternut HF-9V. I'll be playing with loops this year in the hopes that I can improve my performance.
"One man with courage makes a majority." ~ Andrew Jackson
Steve KA9MOT
Macomb, IL
East Tower @50ft: 6M7JHV 7 el 6M beam, and 14 element 2M Horiz beam, 2/450 Vertical
West Tower@50ft: KLM/M2 KT-34 (20,15,10), 2/450 vertical
North Tower@40ft: 11el 2M Vertical beam, 20 el 432 beam, 22 ele 222Mhz beam, 1296 beam,
G5RV @40ft
160/80/40 sloper,
HF2V 75/40 vertical
Cushcraft R5 40-10M vertical
Cushcraft 10M, 6M and 2M Ringos
misc other antennas
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