Hi all, just a short addition to the blog on my new antenna. I managed to get the Hex in the air over the weekend but have had limited time to give it a good test.

First impressions are WOW, where have you been all my life, turning radius of approx 11 feet, VSWR of under 2:1 on ALL bands, will handle full UK limit power with ease and can be homebrewed for under £100 or more if you are looking for a more robust finish. It is in some eyes very low impact visualy but it will not win any points in the best looking antenna contest thats for sure, looks like a spider in a wind tunnel hi hi.

Tags:

Sunday 24th May 2009.

Day started at 8am for me, this is early on a Sunday.

Off to Merthyr Tydfil to dismantle and reassemble a 60 foot mast on a trailer mast from the Hover Club http://www.radioclubs.net/hooverarc.

Many thanks to the club members from the club for helping Rob and I complete this task in lightning speed.

This takes the number of masts at Rob’s farm to four. I suggested planting them close together as they may grow, if they do I would like a cutting lol.

This will make CQWW SSB a breeze this year, said Rob hi hi

Tags:

Hi guys,

Just a quickie, I have drawn a scaled drawing with my fantastic technical drawing abilities :-)

My current antenna is the MQ36SR, this covers 6m to 20m, 3 elle hybrid quad-yagi.

Turning radius of MQ is 8 foot 3 inches and the HEX is 10 foot 7 inches, so looking at the diagram below, if I turn the HEX side on it is actually ONLY 3 foot wider than the MQ36SR. this is an amazing foot print for an antenna that covers 20m to 6m with absolutely no loading or tuning.

The MQ36SR is shown in red, the HEX is also 6m to 20m and is the broadband version by G3TXQ Steve

Tags:

Was browsing around looking for ideas etc and chatting to a few people that had built the Hexbeam and Gorden MM0GPZ mentioned this to me.

It can be found on http://www.sotabeams.co.uk/liquidtape.htm

Good stuff for sealing the coax after it has been seperated as shown below.

Better than silicone I think!

Great for sealing the feedpoint coax

Tags:

Hi all,

About 18 months ago I was reading several articles about the HEX BEAM with great interest, work got in the way along with daily life etc so it was put on the back burner for a while. Around Christmas time 2008 Oliver MW0JRX told me he had bought the kit form from WI3USA. At the time of writing this he has since installed it and is happy with the performance so far. Chris G1VDP then informed me that he was going to make his own homebrew HEX BEAM. Well not wanting to be left out I set about collecting as much info on the antenna as I could with the help of Chris G1VDP, Gordon MM0GPZ (GEEE PEEE ZEEE) and the Yahoo group.

On a recent visit to Rob MW0RLJ’s qth he kindly donated a 3mm aluminum plate along with two KEE Clamps that are needed to fabricate the centre plate that supports the six fiberglass spreaders. Total cost so far zero, thanks Rob 

A trip to B&Q one Sunday morning and I had bought all the parts to fabricate the centre post. I have taken some photos to show you how I fabricated the center post. As I build the HEX BEAM more photos will be added.

Tags:

Hi guys and fellow hams/surfers!

Well after a trip to Rob’s farm to help Rob and Chris erect the 80 and 30m verticals I returned home to give a solo effort from home a bash.

Plan was to use a ¼ vertical with 2 tuned raised radials and a Windom antenna to get the best of DX and inter G and EU. This did work to some extent but I had not used the Windom for quite some time and should have tested it better! The antenna caused quite a bit of RF to the PC which in turn caused problems to the radio! After crawling around on my knees under the desk in the early hours of the morning I managed to fit some RF chokes to cure this in a fashion, I could only run 250 watts but this was not a problem just something I had not counted on. I had a PSU fail on the pc which also needed replacing a day before the contest so it was not a good week for PC’s and me!!


The Vertical was working well on DX but was causing TVI problems with the 400 watts so I also had to reduce power on the vertical to around 200 watts during the day, the vertical was in use mainly at night so this was not much of a problem although it was handy to switch between the two antennas to compare signals and reduce the noise level on times.

My conclusion of this weekends events.
Spend more time sorting my station out during the 2 weeks prior to the contest to cure these problems instead of losing my temper and my frequency. Because of these problems I lost interest and concentration and did not enjoy the event as much as I should.

END RESULT
457 Q's
332 WPX
69 DXCC
Claimed Score 402,052

73’s Ant MW0JZE – GW4OH

Tags:

19th March 2009 80M CC

Chris G1VDP has been pestering me for a few months to join him in the 80m Club Championship contest SSB leg, last night I made the effort!

The contest lasts for one and a half hours with a Signal report and serial number exchange. The first 45 minutes went so fast that I was on serial number 90 giving me a 2 Q a minute rate, not bad for a small contest such as this. The TX antenna was an inverted L with 62 random length radials buried under ground at about 1CM and I used a Carolina Windom for RX from time to time due to high local noise. Power is restricted to 100w and the transceiver was the K3 by Elecraft.

Total Q’s was 150, not bad for my first bash at this small but seemingly very popular event. I will work more on my rx for the next leg and hopefully hit the 200 mark!

TNX and C U in Contest or on the air!

73’s Ant MWØJZE

Tags:

Hi guys

Unfortunately I am not able to join some of the members for this years WPX due to some family commitments that I could not change!

I will however be entering as a single operator, single band non assisted on 40M with high power.

The antenna to be used is a ¼ vertical with two elevated tuned ¼ radials at 48 inches above ground. I would like four but I am unable to fit these in my garden.

A report will be given after the contest; my call for this contest will be GW4OH.

73’s C U in contest

Anthony MW0JZE

Tags: cqwpx | elevated radials | 40m vertical | gw4oh