[Elecraft] N6BT Antennas

[Dave Van Wallaghen]

I may be outside the norm here, but I received my Bravo 7K in 4 weeks 
after I was told it would be 6 - 8 weeks before shipment. Although, I 
tried contacting Tom after the QST article and failed to get a response 
after a couple of months. I read the same thing about his email 
problems. I emailed his alternative address and I got a reply from Natan.

Natan said my email landed in his box and that he would take care of the 
order. After a couple of email transactions, I sent them my PayPal money 
and received a couple of responses from him stating how busy they were 
but he thought they were catching up with some of their orders. He 
stated that it would be 6 - 8 weeks but thought it may be a little 
sooner as he thought they were catching up. Much to my surprise it 
showed up in 4 weeks.

I have not had much time to play with it to this point (heavy work 
schedule), but the little I have played with it, it has been a nice 
piece of work. I really wanted to play around with it for diversity 
reception with my K3, but I've had my LPA board in for repair for about 
4 weeks and have not been able to play with it in that regard. I did 
pull out my K2 and did some a/b comparisons.

It really is an asymmetrical fed vertical dipole, but has many of the 
vertical antenna aspects like more noise etc. It is full length at 20m 
and have found doing the a/b comparison on my K2 that the polarization 
between my 66 foot, ladder line fed, doublet and the Bravo 7K is 
different. On slow QSB I can actually switch between the two and here 
peaks on each. The Bravo 7K is much noisier but some of the sigs are 
much stronger on 20m and higher.

I bought it after the QST article looking for a portable antenna where 
having some kind of tree support may not exist. This does fill that 
requirement. I can set this thing up in about 15 minutes. Tom and Co. 
also incorporated the changes in the QST article by putting the loading 
coil contacts and jumpers on the outside of the water proof enclosure 
with wing nuts and lock washers. This makes changing bands very quick 
and convenient.

They have a measuring chart of where to extend the vertical and radial 
portion of the antenna for the different bands. I took a pipe cutter and 
etched small marks on the tubes at the designated measurements and used 
a Sharpie to to fill in the cut as well as put the band designations. 
This makes switching bands very quick. I also bought a hardware bag for 
drummers (go figure I am one) as it was the least expensive of all the 
bags I could find ($36). It houses not only the antenna (velcro'd where 
appropriate) but coax, assembly tools etc.

It really is a nice setup, but like others, I found that the customer 
service aspect a little daunting. Although, after making contact with 
Natan, things were fairly quick on my end. So, I'm a happy customer from 
this end.

Can't wait to get my LPA back from Elecraft so I can play with some 
diversity reception. I'll let you all know how that works out. Also, 
looking to make some contacts with it from here as well, comparing it to 
my doublet, if I ever get a break from working extra shifts ;-)

73,
Dave W8FGU


On 7/19/2012 8:33 PM, Don Putnick wrote:
> I first heard of the N6BT antennas at Visalia this year. Once I managed to establish contact with Natan, I was told of a large backlog. I decided against buying the Bravo 7K. I changed my mind and decided to go ahead with the order and wait. It was during this time period that N6BT had to ramp up production. I received my antenna in a couple weeks. It was pre-tuned perfectly for 20 meters. I have no personal or professional relationship with either Tom or Natan. Of course, YMMV.
>
> Don NA6Z
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