Tag Archives: hexbeam

Sep 16

Hexbeam: A love story.

Posted on by

I took off from work yesterday (wed) and ended up playing around with some antennas. I wired up the hexbeam and rebuilt the feed point following Leo Shoemaker’s approach. I also added 17m to now make this a quad bander (20,17,15,10).

Hoisting the antenna up on the 25ft mast was quite a challenge, but it’s up. Unfortunately I misjudged the site where the antenna is located but putting it too close to my 40-80-160m inverted Vee and miscalculated the distance from some tree branches.

I would call it a failure, although I found the signal strength comparison between my previous Mosley TA-33 and Hexbeam to be a night and day difference. The Hexbeam works circles around the TA-33 which surprises me. Initially when I went from the hexbeam to the Mosley I didn’t notice too much of a change, but comparing it now having gotten used to the tribander for the last 6 months, I’m very happy with my decision to return to the unconventional design.

Now, I’m not saying the TA-33 is a bad antenna, but for my location it isn’t optimal. The beam was mounted 8ft above the roof around 25ft above ground. I think an antenna of this design would be optimal around 50ft and away from the house. I had found it to become quite a noise antenna that close to the house.

For this close proximity to ground, the hexbeam seems to be the best option I have available to me. A cubical quad may also be a good option as well.

So Sunday the plan is to relocate the antenna 20ft from it’s current site, which should prove to be quite a job. I’m hardly looking forward to installing new ground anchors.

Sep 13

The hexbeam returns!!!

Posted on by

AKA, New antenna projects at N3QO, or AKA, This is how to jam as many antennas into as 1/3 acre lot as possible.

While watching TV last night I came up with a new idea of the antenna layout at our home QTH.

Currently we have Mosley TA-33 about 6 feet above the roof of the house with a 2m cubical quad 4 feet above that and a Comet 2m vertical 4 feet above the quad.

In the back yard I moved the HF Vertical to another part of the yard, and put a 30ft mast in place of the vertical where I planned to put my new satellite rig.
[simage=75,512,n,center,]
So The plan is to remove the TA-33 from the roof (pictured), and install the satellite array there. Is seems to be the best location with clear visibility from the Northeast to the Southwest. We will then install the hex beam on top of the mast in the backyard. Details to follow.

Mar 11

Hexbeam down, Mosley up

Posted on by

Yesterday, since I ran out of room in a 1 car garage, we finished assembling the Mosley in the backyard. All that’s left is to install the feedpoint and run some frequency sweeps on it. And No, that isn’t a miniature picnic table.

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.
[sthumbs=72|74|73,64,6,n,center,]