[Elecraft] Broadband Antenna

[Stuart Rohre]

Mike and group.  Leave out the termination and the Vee beam is bi
directional, although with slope, its back side, fed end, is going to
radiate a high angle.

For the matching you can use a ferrite balun and a few turns of wire, going
to ladder line up to the feed point.  No need for expensive transformer.

Or use the built in balun of your outboard tuner.   External Van Gorden 4:1
baluns work even better than most built in baluns.  Just use single ended
tuner to a foot of coax to Van Gorden and ladder line from there to Vee.

We did place in top ten in our Field Day class with Vee beams for several
years.  Used three from one central point to get near 360 degree operation.
For Field Day use, they need to be low to ground.   Apex over 15 feet high
does not work short skip.   You will have all DX if you go higher.  We found
that out by going to 30 feet on a 10 foot cliff one year.  Bad error for
Field Day where mostly you work North America.  Up high, they are killer DX
antennas.  I am thinking sloping them would give you a combination of DX in
direction of slope and short skip off back.

Use 14 ga. wire to avoid excessive sag, or larger.  But, wire size must be
traded off vs. length.  You want 2 to 5 waves on higher bands.  One wave on
10m is 33 feet or so, two waves there is 66 feet, doable in most home yards,
from one mast and sloping.  On lowest bands even the TT one does not have
gain.

A fun antenna when I first used them. Was like shooting ducks in a barrel to
make QSOs.  Every one you call on 10m comes back, (if 10m is open).  Of
course we had 10 wavelength legs!  I think we figured 13 dB gain on 5 watts
output.
-Stuart
K5KVH