The Hexbeam Antenna Arrives

It arrived this morning by courier, well packed by Clint M0FHN. Weighing at a good 16kg it's quite heavy and I'll probably have to make some adjustments as my old AR-40 light weight rotator might struggle, but we can wait and see.

As I thought the antenna has been well built and if Clint is right in length of time it has been up on a tower at his QTH, then it's in good condition for 2 years sitting on a pole out in the elements!

 

The first thing I have to do is reduce the size of the bottom pole, Clint had a cage and rotator, (I have no cage) so, I can reduce weight by shortening the lower pole. Then I must study G3TXQ website and see how easy it is to put together. But there is no rush, my tilt over mast won't be coming till at least next week so I can study at leisure! Better to take my time and get things right or rushing along and making mistakes!

KSB2 Upgrade for K2

I have finally got round to purchasing a KSB2 SSB upgrade for my K2! Since I bought and built it all those years ago now, I've been meaning to actually get an SSB option but just never got round to it. Maybe the pull of CW was just too strong, or maybe the hassle of buying from across the pond and having to pay out an extra £30 duty tax was putting me off.

I don't know, but finally I ordered the option 2 weeks ago and it turned up in the post on Saturday. Since it was the UK bank holiday weekend I figured I do the bulk of the building now and finish it over a couple of evening during the week.

So off I went forgetting that two years later after a stroke and the hands and eyes combination is not the same as it used to be.  So I was slowed down with that handicap but I did usual couple of an hours work, then have a rest for 20 minutes and carry on. Soldering is definitely an art which takes a while to master, but after a few hours practise I was back up and running.

By Monday evening I had soldered the bulk of the  capacitors, diodes, transistors and resistors. I was amazed that I only did two mistakes which thankfully I picked up on virtually straight away, I still have the toroid's to wind and a few components to add but the main work has been done.

 

Sitting on my old 1970s anti static disc, the bulk of the work has been done.

One thing which proved invaluable to me was my magnifying lenses headset which the XYL bought me as a Christmas present a few years ago!  It has without doubt proved its worth, so if your like me and the eyes are going and you like a bit of soldering, modelling, or another hobby where the eyes are needed, get a pair of these!

Hopefully I'll have the KSB2  installed and working by the end of the week and then my attention should be turning towards a service on the Hexbeam which should have arrived by then and preparing for the tilt over mast which should be appearing during the middle of the month.

A Hexbeam Antenna

At last I found a reasonable priced Hexbeam antenna. Although a homebrew copy of the G3TXQ version, I checked out the pictures and could see that Clint M0FHN knows how to build a good antenna and I'm happy to have bought it. I'm picking it up next week and hopefully will have it already to be set up on the new tilt over mast.

Besides covering the usual 6, 10,12,15 and 20m, Clint cleverly put in a 40m rotated dipole which means if successful at my QTH I could remove the cobweb and the W3DZZ inverted which would please the XYL!

 

With all the reports and reviews from places like Eham, I've been hankering after one of these antennas for sometime, but the MW0JZE commercial Hexbeam has been inundated with orders and he has halted the ordering on his website due to such high demand.

 

The waiting time was just too long for me and I was actually thinking of ordering something else, like a small Yagi, but quite by chance came across Clint's homebrew Hexbeam advert.

 

The way the antenna has been made shows me Clint has done a professional job especially the using the strong flex weave wire and the insulation for the centre pole. He was telling me he followed the G3TXQ instructions and since he built it he's been having good results and reports. The antenna is only a couple of years old, so I reckon with a bit of TLC its got a few years yet!

 

He's only selling because he got an offer to buy a new antenna which was just too good to miss out on.

 

 

 Writing about G3TXQ Steve Hunt, I've just heard he's in hospital with a tumour in his back. Poor old Steve , what rotten luck, here's hoping he recovers quickly! Although we have never met I have chatted via forums and of course built his version of the Cobweb antenna and am hoping to have some excellent times with this his version of the Hexbeam.

First Part of the Tilt Over Mast Arrives

Typical, I seem to be going through a patch of bad luck! the TGM MQ-2 antenna deal has fallen through. The seller had a local buyer and obviously went with him as packing and preparing from Scotland down south would have cost him time and money, so I can sort of understand that.

So I'm on the lookout for either a mini beam or light weight Yagi. But I can wait, I've said to myself there's no rush, take your time, see what deals are about or come up, something is eventually bound to happen.

The base sleeve for my new tilt over mast has arrived and I can now go ahead and prepare by finishing off the 1 metre square hole. Talk about hard ground in my paddock, all rocks hardly any soil, so digging is a case of using a sharp metal pole about 5 foot long and a pick and shovel! After that it should become a little easier with just keeping the sleeve upright and true, then just cementing in, ready for when the main mast arrives.

 

This is what the finished product should look like

 

and this is where I am in the process of laying in the sleeve!

 

If I get the cement finished like the top picture it will be a miracle, but hopefully it will be near as damn it! The good thing is as the ground is like rock I don't have to be too accurate, its bedded in a good 450mm so far and I reckon with a top up it will be fine. I'll then cover it over with some top soil so the XYL won't complain too much and we should be OK. Hopefully it will make a big difference to raising and lowering antennas.

 

The finished product!

The Dual Beam Pro Antenna and New MQ-2 Antenna

I purchased the Dual Beam Pro antenna and set it up on my temporary 20 foot mast. It took me only an hour to build and I was quickly checking the SWR. However you really have to use an internal or external ATU for all bands (certainly for 40m).

Living out in the middle of nowhere I’m at an advantage that I don’t have any built up areas nearby to obscure the antenna and I get a good take off point for 360 degrees. That said, you tend to forget that my other antennas like the cobweb and the Hustler 6BTV are in an ideal location and behave accordingly, so when you put up something like a pro beam antenna it’s up against stiff competition

It’s quiet and certainly you get good reception on all bands, tuning up was OK except for 40 meters where you need to manually tune but then it did work. Signal reports in to Europe where good and I was regularly getting 5/7 to 5/9.

But when comparing with the cobweb or Hustler it was roughly similar or slightly down. £250 is a lot of money for this antenna but I can see why someone would be happy with it living in a built up area where conditions were not ideal, but if you are living in an area where you’re already getting a good signal, this does not boost like a Yagi or a proper beam antenna like the Moxon.

So after having it up on my temporary mast for most of one day I decided to take it down and sell it. Not because I don’t like it, but simply because it was not what I was expecting, maybe I was a little naive, but that’s the lesson learnt. I’m definitely going for a mini beam antenna, which I should have done before, but sometimes you have to go through hoops and jumps before you get to your end target!

So a few days later I find what I'm looking for a TGM MQ-2 antenna, similar to the MQ-1 but with the WARC bands. These are pretty much the main bands I use so I'm fairly happy with the result. The only issue is the antenna is presently up in Scotland so I'm having to wait while the seller packs it all up and I can go ahead and arrange collection. But my mast has still not arrived yet so I'm happy to wait for the moment.

 

The TGM MQ-2 Antenna

On another matter, looking at my stats for this Blog I see I've reached the 100,000 lookups! I like to say a big thanks to all my readers from literally all over the World, I hope that you've enjoyed the read and in some cases it has either been useful or helpful towards this great hobby of ours!



Winch Update

Well I tested the winch over the weekend and things were not so good. I could raise fairly well but the pole was always lifting and swaying at a horizontal angle, plus the bottom attachment of the pole was getting caught.

I tried various ways to fix it, but unfortunately it proved too difficult. In the end I gave up, I was just about to concrete in when I thought this is pointless it's just not working properly and in future years, I would be raising up and down sometimes on a regular basis for testing antennas. If it wasn't working correctly now, what would it be like in a few months time?

I really needed something more solid, so in the end after much thought I gave it up. It was annoying as I rarely give in, I like to work things out and repair, but something as important as this has to be right. When I retire in the next few years, this will be my main hobby and I will be experimenting with different homebrew antennas, so I want to have a mast that raises and lowers easily which is permanent and more importantly will last.

So reluctantly, I have now ordered a 35 foot professional built mast with two winches one for lifting the mast upright the other to raise. I've already dug out the hole for its sleeve which is 500mm deep and 1m square. The sleeve is coming sometime next week and I can go ahead and get it concreted in ready for the full mast which will be arriving sometime in late April.

Something's you win and something's you lose!

Completion of Tilt Over Mast & An Antenna at Last

Continuing with the building of the homebrew wind up/tilt over mast, I have at last managed to finish the build, but due to the past week of heavy winds not yet tested.

I actually completed on Monday, but on looking at the pulley which was first placed directly below the winch, I felt the angle was too direct and would probably cause some kind of an issue, I think the raised pole would hit the pulley. Suffice to say I bought two steel rectangular plates, cut them to size and fitted so that the pulley came out and away from the scaffold poles, so as to create more of gap between the main pole and the scaffold poles. My geometry has never been much good, but you just know when you get that feeling that something could work better if you redesigned it, and besides it looks better!

I've buried the two upright poles 3 feet in the ground and I'll concrete and ballast when and I'm completely happy it's all working as it should be.

I think it's a reasonable effort and should be OK for some light antenna work, anyway it will save me from further back ache! But I'll do some more testing this weekend.

I took the Moxon down after seeing the rotator swing in the high winds and presumed it was too weak for the 17m Moxon. But in actual fact when fitting the winch I notice some of the nuts attaching the rotator to the aluminium scaffold pole were loose, realising this was the probable cause of the free rotation, doh!  So instead, I have now fitted the 6 element 2m Yagi, I'm going to leave it  for the moment and try out 2 metres this weekend.

After much thinking, reviewing and mulling over, I have finally chosen an new antenna and it's a mix between a beam and an Omni directional, its called a Dual Beam Pro antenna by Pro antennas   It's very light and reasonably unobtrusive so wont annoy the villagers and it has bidirectional characteristics requiring only 180 degrees rotation to cover the globe.

The dual beam pro, interesting shape?

I must admit at first I was all for a mini beam or a Yagi, but after reading the write ups and seeing it has a good score in E-ham reviews. I bit the bullet and purchased it and am now eagerly awaiting it's arrival. I will do a separate review of the antenna at a later date. 

Hustler 18 and 24Mhz Upgrade

On a past post I told you about my Hustler 6BTV upgrade which I  added the 24Mhz and 18Mhz elements by tapping at the base of the antenna. This is a simple process that literally takes a morning to do and adds two more bands to the antenna.

Just by adding the two elements horizontally each side of the base of the antenna for about a foot and then raising vertically and hanging at the top you have the two extra bands.
Pictures speak louder than words so I've added some for you to see just how easy it is.

The basic set up with the elements on each side of the antenna

A better view of how the elements are spread out from the base

And finally how the tapping was done with a simple screw, easy!

Overall I checked it against the cobweb as the moxon is currently in the lowered mode, it actually seemed quieter with roughly similar SWR readings. I think for some DX work it should be OK.

Hustler changes and a Winch system for the Moxon

I’m currently working on upgrading my Hustler vertical antenna 6BTV to incorporate 17 and 24 meters. It’s a fairly easy upgrade, in which you tap in to the base of the antenna and fit the 12 and 24 meter elements. By extending out from the base by about a foot horizontally and then rising vertically parallel to the vertical tube hanging and from the top. I found the best idea was some was to attach some plastic tubing to the top and antenna by some zip cable and it seemed to do the trick.

My other project at the moment is building a winch for the main 30ft mast. Raising and lowering has been a physical effort for me and it can be quite precarious, it's right on the border of my lifting capabilities with the 17 meter Moxon and the rotator. So I decided on a winch system and have been planning for a while (see earlier post).

I was going to purchase one to save the bother of having to build, but the prices are not cheap, so I figured I could do just as well in constructing something just to get a light weight antenna raised to a moderate 30 feet. I was thinking about a pulley at the top of my two scaffolds poles, but I think an easier solution is to put it at the base instead, nothing about the physics more it's just easier to build!

Starting the winch build

It’s just two scaffolds pole about 8ft in length bolted together with a pulley at the base and the winch on a steel plate halfway up the poles. The cable from the winch runs down through the pulley to the base of the attached mast. On winching the base of the mast is pulled inwards towards the scaffold poles rotating and raising the mast. Simple but effective, the only hard bit will be digging out two and half feet of hole and mixing up some concrete!

 

The completed winch, simple but hopefully effective!

To be honest while I have been building the winch, I have noticed the light weight rotator with the Moxon has been playing up in the high winds by slipping at the point of its azimuth. Unfortunately there is no lock, so if I leave it facing SW direction sometimes end up with it facing north, which can get a wee bit confusing!

So it may have to come down at some stage while I put up a smaller Moxon or my 2 meter 6 element Yagi, I think the 17 meter one is slightly too big for the rotator, even in a light wind its seems to slip, which is annoying as it can get quite gusty up here.
This of course puts a downer on my purchasing a mini beam antenna, so I may just have to have another think at what's about and works for me. But I'll try something smaller first to see if that solves the issue.

What Yagi and Tilt Over Mast Designs

Continuation on a mini beam progresses and I’m thinking of purchasing a THF2-e Yagi, a two element tribander for 20, 21 and 10 meters. Reasonably priced at £360, the reviews have been pretty good and I think it would suit my needs. However it’s still early days yet so we’ll wait and see.

Currently the 17m Moxon is sitting in the horizontal position due to high winds. For the past few weeks I have been manually raising and lowering the antenna which can be quite tough, as it’s reasonably heavy with a 25’ scaffold pole, rotator and probably 8 kilos of antenna. So it does add up a bit and can be a bit of a struggle for one person!

I’m trying to design a winch system for a tilt over mast which would incorporate two 8’ scaffold poles positioned close together 2' deep in the ground, similar to what I have now with the main 25' mast between them which rotates with a bolt between all poles.

A winch will be attached to both or one of the poles, with a pulley at the top and winching would then pull the mast in an upward direction therefore saving my back!! All basic stuff but with a bit more planning and thinking should work OK.

Anyway I've already bought a 2500 lbs strain winch off eBay on the cheap and am now looking out for other bits and pieces that I may need. Everything will have to be strong and sturdy so welding as well as bolting will probably be incorporated. This might prove to be an interesting project but I'm sure there will be some good ideas on the web when I give it a good search.