Here is the antenna before I sealed it all up with silicon.
I have made 160m through 17m antennas just like this and they all have been extremely successful and very inexpensive to make. Being that they are all in a forest having the horizontal elements laying on the ground is a very good thing ...for obvious reasons! I have never had a vertical element taken out by a tree!
With time on my hands I modeled the antenna using MMANA
Here is the antenna with the radials spread evenly...a true isotropic radiator with no gain!
Cut it a little short ...depending on how it tests I may add a bit to the vertical element.
So I played around with the 8 radials moving them all +/- 90 degrees from the X Axis...
Well now , quite the surprise suddenly its a directional antenna with 1.5 db gain over the isotropic as well as a front to back of 2.4 db. Where I live there is very little to the N NE , not going for Europe on 6m. My target is NA so I figured I would aim the antenna S SW it should put a wee bit more signal in the direction of 95% of my 6m activity. Looking at the Smith Chart in the direction of E SE and N NW its about the same as having the radials spread evenly.
On another note if interest.....
This antenna is going at the top of the hill, 500ft of LDF4 figure somewhere around 3 db or a little less attenuation. Also at the top of the hill my 160m inverted L. I have been using this antenna on 6m because it works very well and it even loads without an antenna tuner and around 50.260 its an even match. Its great for sporadic E, LOS up to 350 km regularly and I have even logged a few MSK144 meteor scatter contacts. It will be super interesting to compare the new antenna to the 160m inverted L.
And here is the antenna installed at the top of the hill...I am pleased now to see how it works!
No comments:
Post a Comment