This is true Bill. A person definitely needs something to cover the 4 major favored directions. When I phased 2 pennants it became even worse receiving stations off the side and back. I should probably take a look at the K9AY or the full blown EWE. Hopefully within a few days I will have the reversible pennant on the air to see if it will even work. I am very close. Why I think the K9AY would be preferable over a pennant is the more compact switching and the better overall layout for multiple directions. 

I find it all pretty fascinating! 

Randy/W5ZJ


On Tue, 9 Dec, 2025 at 7:50 AM, BILL KENNAMER <[email protected]> wrote:
To: [email protected];
Cc: [email protected]
A 4 direction pennant is actually what a K9AY antenna is.

FUV


Sent from AT&T Yahoo Mail for iPad

On Monday, December 8, 2025, 4:18 PM, Dennis Schaefer <[email protected]> wrote:

Randy,

That is a very interesting project!  I have some little 12V open frame relays, so I could experiment with stuff I have on hand.  If you could reverse a single Pennant, then you could cover all points with a pair of them.  I’ll be looking forward to the results.

I’ve been stymied so far by the fact that I get lazy when it’s cold outside.  I’ve also wasted time worrying about where to put the antenna, but I’m planning to make it steerable to some degree with a rope and stake.  I’ve got lots of projects working in my mind, just need to convert them to action.   And - yikes! - it’s just a couple of weeks to Christmas and we have done absolutely no shopping :)

Keep letting us in on your projects - it’s good to know some people are actually building things!

73,
Dennis
On Thu, Dec 4, 2025 at 6:12 PM <[email protected]> wrote:

Good to see you back! I'm thinking that direction is way overrated anyway. I have been working on a "secret" pennant project. I think you may have slipped into my "lab" and took a peek at my "engineering" documents. I would send a picture, but I'm on my PC and the pictures are on my phone, and never the twain have met. The short story of this project is I am attempting to design a circuit  that will allow a person to reverse directions of the pennant without actually moving the pennant. I haven't a clue if it will work, but I should know in the next week or 2. 


I'm all for banning ragweed and noise. Let's start a petition!


Randy/W5ZJ....pics will follow from my phone.



On Thu, 4 Dec, 2025 at 4:26 PM, Dennis Schaefer <[email protected]> wrote:
 
To: adxa
Which way is up?

During the DX contest, I turned the beam SE and worked ZF5T quickly on several bands.  They were booming in, with a big signal.  Saturday morning, I noticed  EU was weaker than I expected and ZF was coming in better from about 60 degrees.  Sticking with BIC guidelines, I couldn’t be bothered to go outside and actually look at the antenna.  

I tried unsuccessfully to work 4U1UN, a band counter on 10M.  The signal was best around 300 degrees.  I finally went out and looked,  and discovered the antenna was off course.  EU was much stronger when the indicator showed NW.  This was more than calibration could fix, so I corrected the rotator scale with a dry erase pen and will deal with it soon.  (I did bag 4U1UN once I got this figured out).  

Since my dead trees have been removed, I can put the Pennant receive antenna back up.  Last year, my main noise source was to the South so I put the null toward that direction.  The South noise source has disappeared.  I never did figure out where it was coming from.  Now the noise is from the power pole that is to the North.  Putting the null to the North is not ideal for DX but I think I would get the best S/N by doing that.   I need to figure out a new ideal location for the pennant and how to steer the null.  The weather is not cooperating with this.   

Maybe I should give the pole a few whacks with the BFH.  Although I have never done that, nope, never, I have heard of it being done.  But again, I’ve never done anything like that, no sir!  Did I mention that I would never do anything like that, and if I did, I would be sure nobody saw me :) 

73,
Dennis/RZ 
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