Posts Tagged hex beam
Hexbeam down, Mosley up
Posted by jeff in Antenna Stuff on March 11th, 2010
Earlier today I swapped out the Hex-beam with the Mosley TA-33. With the upcoming storms lining up for the new few days, I wanted to get this thing in the air. The receive quality is spectacular and already I’ve worked Greece and Nigeria with 5-8-5-9 reports. The performance is very comparable to the hex-beam with a good deal less noise.
Alot has changed at N3QO….
Posted by jeff in Antenna Stuff on October 29th, 2009
In the course of the last month while talking with Jay (N3OW), I’ve been introduced to Hex Beams. I initially was introduced to them a while back after seeing the $500+ kit from DX Engineering, but didn’t think much of it. If it wasn’t a dipole, yagi or vertical it wasn’t of optimal design… Or so I thought.
After reading a number of reviews of the design from various vendors, I decided to venture in building one myself. I went out with a minimal budget and bought 1/16″ plate steel, U-bolts and 12′ crappie poles. This would serve as my $250 prototype. I had found that my implementation of the design was weak and quite fragile in nature, but it did make it up on the roof in one piece with elements for 20 and 15 meter. Also to note, there are 2 styles of Hex beam. The original places the reflector in an opposing M-shape from the W-shaped driven element. In 2007 a ham discovered that the reflector could be reconfigured to form the outer shape of the hex which would ultimately increase front-to-back ratio and make the antenna broadband in nature, giving us a much lower SWR.
I had found this antenna had more front-to-back ratio than the Cushcraft MA5B I had just taken down. At most I had seen 12db f/b on the Cushcraft, and a minimum of 18 on the hex beam. At peak I had found approximately 24db while working a station in Ireland.
My first contact on the hex was Chris (9Y4D) in Trinidad who reported back a 59+10. A signal report I had never seen at 100 watts. I would later work another station in Italy with the same report. I was sold.
It was time to make the design more permanent and it was time for the Cushcraft to be put up for sale. The money for the MA5B completely covered the upgrade costs for the MaxGain Hexbeam spreader kit. This kit is a MUST! Don’t even bother with the crappie poles. They are just that, crappy. I broke 2 of them on the ground just trying to get the spreaders under tension and then trying to get it up on the roof. Spend the $140 and go the right route. You won’t regret it. I also found the original base I had built had warped under the tension of the spreaders. For another $30, I rebuilt the base, way overkill than it needed to be. Regardless, it won’t be a part which will fail.
After 2 hours of rebuilding, restringing and then raising the antenna, I was back on the air with 20-15-10m capabilities, with a very flat and acceptable SWR Sweep.
Below are photos of the build and SWR sweep images.
crickets…..
Posted by jeff in Antenna Stuff, Shack Stuff on September 23rd, 2009
WOW! It’s been a while since I’ve posted. Even with this blog being purely about ham radio, alot has been going on for me within the hobby. Here’s the update:
1) The Pocono Hamfast was an unfortunate bust. We drove 70 miles from our QTH in Pottstown, PA, to be faced with a “less than mediocre” hamfest. Only 1 vendor listed on the flyer was there and they were only selling power poles and HT cases. Honestly this has to be the worst one I’ve been to yet, which was quite unfortunate.
2) With the upcoming 2009 CQ RTTY contest this weekend (Sept 26-27) I’ve enabled digital modes on Laurie’s Heathkit SB401/301. I took a hint from another ham using the HD15 phone patch as a computer interface for a DVK (digital voice keyer), I used our SB-630 station console for PSK/RTTY/SSTY instead. It was quite simple to do even though their appears to be a 550 ohm impedance difference between the computer and the phone patch interfaces. So far so good. Posts with photos coming soon.
3) I recently aquired an IC-2200H for the truck. Even though it’s only 2 meter, it gives me better D-Star capabilities down the road. My interest in D-Star has been waning as of late. Packet loss and “R2D2′ing” gets old quick, especially when you are a member of net operations. Thoughts of selling my 91AD for this reason have been plaguing me lately. See my recent D-Star post.
4) After spending an afternoon with my local radio club (DLARC) and speaking to a fellow ham, I’ve been introduced into the world of Hex Beams and Cubical Quads. I’ve never really investigated these types of antennas as they’re not considered to be the “conventional beam”. I’m happy to say after doing a bit of research, I’ve started building the base of the antenna and am quickly aquiring the parts to build the rest of the antenna. It seems all the commercial vendors want $100 for a hex base. I really wanted to go with the DX Engineering base, but decided to go completely homebrew instead and spent $30 at The Home Depot last night on parts. As I build this thing I’ll post my experiences and photos as I progress.