MSWE 2021 -- Heads Up

[tombogan03884]

Sniffed it, pissed on it and went back to sleep ?   

[Rastus]

Naw...it had blood on it.  It got crunched and clawed.

[Rastus]

Just FYI to you ham guys I scored a used Force 12 Tri-Band C-3E antenna for $270 including shipping.  It's in great shape and will be up for next year's MSWE.

[Jim Kennedy-ar154me]

Just FYI to you ham guys I scored a used Force 12 Tri-Band C-3E antenna for $270 including shipping.  It's in great shape and will be up for next year's MSWE.

Hell of a price. I hope you have help in putting it up. You have a good rotor?

[alfsauve]

Just FYI to you ham guys I scored a used Force 12 Tri-Band C-3E antenna for $270 including shipping.  It's in great shape and will be up for next year's MSWE.

Uh Rastus, you left a zero on the end of that price.  WOW.  A steal.

RECOMMENDADTIONS?

I've been hobbling along for 4 months now with a 20m Ham Stick mounted on my tower.   Thinking, okay, I can be happy with a multi-band vertical. Much cheaper and much less hassle than a rotatable beam.   I want 40m-6m with a good match, no tuner required, don't care about WARC bands.   And I'm putting this 24' up on my mini-tower so radial not desired.

Been looking at  the options.   One, I think the Comet, uses a mystical, magical matching device that, while providing 50Ohm matching, the antenna itself isn't really "resonant" at the right frequencies.  Nope.  I want some semblance of resonance for each band.     Been looking at the usual suspects like MFJ and High-Gain and Diamond.

Any words of wisdom?

[Sponsor]

[Rastus]

Hmmm.  6 meters is so far from the other bands in frequency it sort of just gums things up to include it on a multi-band antenna.  Just throw up a do-it-ourself dipole for 6 meters...it's only 4-1/2 feet of wire on either side of balun.  I'd go to The Wireman  https://thewireman.com/  and buy the components. 

The best antenna I've had is a vertical loop fed on the side with 450 ohm ladder (window) line.  Get that from The Wireman too.  It's about 73-75' of wire in a circle.  I use insulated ~12-14 gauge wire and string it in trees.  The loop doesn't have the noise and it does have gain...in this configuration it's fairly omnidirectional.   And...here's the big deal....the bottom of it only needs to be a few feet from the ground...mine was about 4' off the ground.  If you feed it from the side you get vertical polarity and a low radiation angle. 

Here's the kicker on that loop....get an antenna tuner.  I have an AT4K that I can bring in a string of ladder line.  Doing that I have tuned that 20 meter loop for 75 meters, 40 meters, 20 of course, 17, 15 and 10 meters.  You have to play with the tuner a bit but it worked for me.  There's less of a null on the sides of the loop than a dipole. 

There's essentially no loss with ladder line.  You have to keep it away from metal and the ground but it works.  And the key of it is that at high SWR's there can be a ton of loss in your transmission through coax (when you tune a non-resonant antenna) but not so with ladder line.  Resonant is great...but being non-resonant does not mean that nearly as much energy isn't transmitted into signal just because it is non-resonant.  High SWR's and non-resonance is OK...better than coax and coils that suck the power away.

I have some links/files back home I can send you when I get back there next week and some great links.  The Villages retirement community has some great information....maybe I sent Pathfinder the links.  But they have a great rollup page on antenna pro's and con's.  There is also a powerpoint on trimming an antenna and ladder line to specific lengths that give multipband capabilities...I made a couple they worked great...I gotta find it thoug.

For now peruse this one on loops:  http://www.ve2azx.net/technical/AntenneLoop21MHz-3EN.pdf

[alfsauve]

I'm not big on any antenna that requires an external, in shack tuner.   Never had success with them.  Plus you're tuning the feed line to be part of the antenna.  And you got to fiddle with them when changing bands.   

I did have a multi-band wire dipole for years but the trees had to come down.

Now my ideal would be the SteppIR  yagi but >$4k is way out of my budget.   Even their 40m-6m vertical is $2k. 

I'm debating between the MFJ 1797 or 1796 verticals right now.   Simple.  No radials.  Tuned elements.  And best of all <$500.

 

[Rastus]

Well then I'd go with the Hustler 5BTV (even though mine is still unassembled).  They are around $225.  It's ranked a little higher than the MFJ's and will save you $100 or so.  For either the Hustler or the MFJ you will need to put out at least 16 radials in the yard to get the performance up to snuff (the reason why the 5BTV isn't up over here).  Purist run 32 or so radials per band...which I think is overkill.  Just an adder...you don't need the radials on a loop.  The good thing would definitely be that you can switch bands on either vertical and not have to fool with tuning...which is a plus.

Again, I don't mix 6 with HF....but I am sure it will work if you get the 1796.  My preference would be for a dedicated j-pole or vertical for 2 meters and spending $25 on wire and a balun (or a dedicated vertical for ~$75) for 6 meters.  That's because I have the 2 meter/70 centimeter input/output on my transceiver and 6 meters is through the HF input/output.  If you have some restrictions or you don't mind switching over (or your transceiver ports 6 meter to the same input/output as 2 meter/70 centimeter which is assuming your unit is an HF/VHF/UHF model) then you can save a few bucks with the 5BTV and get a dedicated dual (or triband to include 70 centimeters) antenna for 6 and 2 meters.   Of course if you have an antenna like the 1796 you'll likely need to split or switch the coax to use the 2 meter function because you'll need to separate it for your input/output ports.

I think breaking up HF from VHF/UHF will give you better performance than an antenna that tries HF along with UHF.  There is some extra cost with extra coax to split up the bands but that is what I do.  The 5BTV is higher rated and cheaper....I didn't look at the 1796 performance on 2 meters but I bet a dedicated 2 meter or dual or tri band VHF/UHF will perform better and you may get it all at nearly the same cost.  And here's a plus...the 5BTV does 80 meters.

Hustler 5 BTV review:  https://www.eham.net/reviews/view-product?id=1902
Single review for the 1797:  https://www.eham.net/reviews/view-product?id=13105
1796 review:  https://www.eham.net/reviews/view-product?id=1374

Some of the reviews make mention of the MFJ brand being less robust than the Hustler but that's all I had to go by...the reviews.  And again...I didn't check the gain figures between Hustler and MFJ but they both have enough reviews to point me solidly towards the Hustler. 

[alfsauve]

I've always thought the MFJ  stuff was a little less than robust.

Radials are probably not going to happen.   I'm mounting this 25' up on top of my tower.  Nobody has good indication as to what's going to happen if I don't use radials in that situation.   The 5-BTV says you definitely need radials above ground height mounting.  I could, I guess just hang some down the side of the tower as an experiment.

I've got a 6m antenna but I hate changing coax.  Might have to bite the bullet and get a switch.

This will probably be an August project.  See what I read and figure out between now and then.

BTB, with my 20m ham stick at 25', I've gotten 36 states confirmed in LoTW since May.  Believe it or not I still need NY.   Of course WA, OR, AK, HI & ME are on my watch list.

[Rastus]

That's great on the contacts. 

You can slope the radials down.  The only thing I vaguely remember about doing that is to insulate them from the ground and they also double as guy wires.  You can find information on a search about that....I'm thinking 4 radials per band will really bump up the gain. 

However, that is not what I plan to do because, for now, the 5BTV will be a secondary HF antenna to the other antennas.  I'll run 3-6 radials with insulators for length control as guy wires. 

Edit--I Found It

This link helps a lot:  http://www.k4vrc.com/uploads/1/0/1/5/10156032/2015_tvarc_antenna_guide.pdf

Note how it grades various antenna types.  Very helpful.