[HCARC] 40/80/160 Hexbeam - Thinking Outside The Box

[Gary Johnson]

I love my Hexbeam Antenna!!  That said with the sun going quiet it is frustrating not to have the same performance available for the Top Bands.  Thinking out of the box about how to build one without having to resort to compromise measures such as traps, etc my best guess is to use 7 telephone poles set in a perfect hexagon with the 7th pole acting as the center post of a Hexbeam.  I also suspect the poles would be set far enough apart when accommodating a 160 Hexbeam that one could also put up a pretty much perfectly circular 160 meter full wave loop.  Instead of attaching the Hexbeam wire elements between spreaders you suspend the "corners" from ropes at each point of the Hexagon like doing a loop, with the wires terminating on the center pole with coax running to the base.  How do you rotate it you ask.  Put up more than one element per band pointing to where you want to talk.  Looking at the tests for hexbeams 20 meters and above, the strongest signal covers between 60 and 90 degrees of arc.  Looking at an azimuthal projection centered on South Texas, three 60 degree arcs covers most of the inhabited world.  What I don't know is how 9 sets of wires (three for each band) would interact - they don't seem to on a 20 and above hexbeam nor how being close to the ground might affect the signal - straight up – however people make DX contacts with hexbeams sitting in 5 gal buckets!!  The other problem would be how to extend telephone poles to get additional height and I haven’t worked that out - yet.  Any Ideas???  I’d like to be able to get the top wires of the Hexbeam up around 50-55 feet.  I currently have plenty of 30 foot telephone poles that are excess to my needs.  Last, to "rotate" between antennas all one would have to put at the base of the center pole is one of those Ameritron remote antenna switches.


THINK ABOUT IT - wouldn't the Top Bands be fun with a gain antennas??

73,

Gary J
N5BAA