80 becomes 60

 I had 2 80m inv V antennas ,  the 80/40/20 Fan  Dipole  part way up the hill and the 80m inverted V at the top of the hill.  Initial WSPR testing I found that the antenna on the hill was better to the East by 1 db  and the antenna part way up favored the west by 2-3.     The antenna at the top of the hill has 300' more IFL then the one behind the house.  Its mostly LDF4 so its not lossy and looks good when swept.    I decided that there wasn't much to be gained by the 2 antennas and kept the Fan part way up the hill on 80 being that it had a significant advantage to the W SW and besides it would have been tricky to tune with the 40 and 20m elements.    

 Cut the Inv V on the top of the hill down to 2X44' segments creating  60m inv V.    Quick check of the VSWR was 1.3 : 1 ... good enough.   Did 1 brief SSB QSO and was pleased with the results.    

 Next up I need to mod the 450D  for 60m operation ...looks simple cutting a diode or a jumper!   Just another item on the Ham to do list!    

Next Up

 

80m vs 80m...the battle of the dipoles.

  Just did a 2 day WSPR on the 80m Inverted V at the top of the hill vs the 80m Inverted V ( fan ) just behind the house.   The week before the test I worked a bunch of FT8  with both antennas.  The one at the top of the hill performed better towards the east  and the one behind the house ( part way up the hill ) performed better to  the west.   

Here is the 2 day spots map! 

Blue is House , Red is Hill and Green is both

IMI is the antenna just behind the house and LDP is the antenna at the top of the hill.   The hill made it to Africa and the house made it to Hawaii.    

Two antennas and the top 10 spots by distance...

Simultaneous Spots 

So overall the house was on average 0.76 db better then the hill.   

 I ended up with 8977 simultaneous spots between 0 and 180 degrees and 4,562 spots simultaneous spots between 180 and 360 degrees.     Note ,   the hill more or less runs North South and both antennas run parallel to the hill... all within 30 degrees of true N-S.   

 I averaged out the SNR comparisons  between the hill and house  from 8,997 simultaneous spots between 0 and 180 degrees and found on the average the hill antenna performed 0.67 db better then the house.   Next I averaged out the SNR comparisons  between the hill and house  from 4,562  simultaneous spots between 180 and 360 degrees and found on the average the house performed 3.56 db better them the hill.   

 The shack to the antenna just behind the house is about 100' to the 4X1 switch with a combo of about  30' of RG214 then 20' of hardline then from the switch to the antenna is about 50' of RG59.   The shack to the antenna on the hill is pretty much LDF4 all the way around 500'.   On paper there is very little loss and 3 MHz on the LDF.   Potentially there are losses on either or that I am not taking into account.   I need to at some point actually measure the loss.  None the less the Antenna on the hill was head in the Canary Islands and the Antenna behind the house was heard in Hawaii.    What I found was more or less my experience after operating from both antennas running FT8 last week.   

IFL

  Doing some fall antenna work ahead of the winter weather.  After testing the 6/10/15 fans one at the top of the hill and one just up behind the house become quite apparent to me just how much better the antenna performs at the top of the hill ,   1 to 2 S units .... huge!   I currently have 6 IFL runs to the top of the hill.   The original has been there 20 years and no longer test good.   There is 2 connection  in the 500' IFL  so I am going to isolate which section is bad.   There is one IFL  that goes from the 4X1 switch that ends about 100' from the top of the hill.  Its has been protected from the weather and is probably good for future use.   There are 2 in use that test well ,  the 160m inverted L and the 15/10/6 Fan.   The other 3 terminate at the old 80m Vertical ( not in use IFL bad), then one IFL that ends to the left of the old 80m then another that terminates where the 6/10/15 is located.  I have a 80/40/20 fan just up behind the house that I would like to recreate at the top of the hill.  It will be really interesting to see if I get the same sort of improvement with it there.   Depending on when the weather closes in  am going to first get 1 or two of the existing IFLs to the top.  They are all put together in chunks so its just a matter of isolating the bad bits.  If I don't get there this fall then it will be next years project.     

Fan vs Fan

 Built another 6/10/15 fan more or less the same as the one at th etop of the hil.  New fan is just up behind the house about 35' above the ground and somewhere around 50' lower in overall elevation compared to the one at the top of the hill.   I had both antenna on the same 4 X 1 switch.  All of my signal reports on both antennas seemed to always come up about 10 db less then what I was reporting.   Propagation has a a lot to do with it however I was suspicious of the  IFL run between the house and the switch 100+' of a good diameter hardline.   

 First thing I did was to move the new antenna to my other 4X1 switch  but it didn't seem too make any difference still was getting on the magnitude of  -10 db over the reports I was handing out.    I terminated the IFL to the "hill" switch  with a 50 ohm  load and swept the IFL with the Nano.   I had a "spare " line of the same IFL and swept it too and compared both .   

IFL feeding the "hill" 4X1 switch 

Spare IFL 

So ya ,  both IFLs are good...phew.  Going from the house to the hill the IFL is burried ,  about 30' and its a pin to replace it.   

This morning I flipped between the new fan and the old one on top of the hill  over a 1 hour period.  15m propagation came into play from time to time but flipping back and forth keeping the transmission numbers about the same should take propagation out of the equation. 

Existing 15/10/6 Fan on the top of the hill. VA3IMI

New fan just up behind the house .  VE3LDP

I was really expecting the new 6/10/15 to outperform the old one just simply because the IFL was so much shorter but that isn't what happened.   The antenna on top of the hill has a 360 degree clear LOS vs the one behind the house that has LOS blockage from about 350 deg through 120 deg.    

So the new antenna is coming down and I am going to beef up the antenna on the hill and do a once over on the IFL to ensure its protected against the weather. 

Another new fan test - 15m 16:00 GMT

 New 15/10/6 fan - 15m again! 

Old fan , top of hill. 

15/10/6 Fans Testing ...Round 2

 Waited until early eve then repeated the same test as this morning CQing every other minute each antenna for 30 minutes.  Once again the fan on the hill wins.  I had Oman and Italy answer my CQ using the old fan on top of the hill. 

VA3IMI , fan on top of hill

VE3LDP, new fan.