[ICOM] AH-4 help

[Michael P. Olbrisch]

Boy - you might be stirring up a hornet's nest mentioning that antenna.
Some thing it is little better than a dummy load.  OTOH - my experience has
been that it worked well enough.  Using it for military operations - we were
consistently (over a number of years) able to make contacts over 1000 miles
on a 3.2xx MHz freq.  Performance above 5 MHz was at least as good as a
dipole.  It was up as an inverted-V - 50 feet at the apex and 30 feet at the
ends, with the legs at about 160º - the V facing E-NE.

You may not need to fold it back - there may be trees or other supports you
can tie it off to.  And it don't have to be in a straight line, the legs
180º from each other.  Anything better than 120º will work, with some
skewing of the radiation pattern. 

Last - everyone always assumes that metal near a radiating element is bad.
That ain't necessarily so.  A yagi antenna is designed to put other metal
near a radiating element.  So while unpredictable - you may find that on
some freqs it will enhance your operation.  Same with the legs - at some
angle the signals add as in a V-beam.  Impossible to tell what the effects
will be - so try experimenting.

Good luck.

Mike.  KD9KC
El Paso, TX.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: icom-bounces at mailman.qth.net 
> [mailto:icom-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Larry Winslow
> Sent: Thursday, December 08, 2005 7:03 AM
> To: ICOM Reflector
> Subject: Re: [ICOM] AH-4 help
> 
> Now why didn't I think of that??? Sometimes we 
> miss the obvious. I'll give your suggestion a lot 
> of thought. The thing that pops into my mind is 
> that the vertical surfaces of the apartment 
> building are what's called "rockcrete" which 
> means there's chicken-wire type mesh under the 
> surface. Still your idea has a lot of merit.
> 
> Thanks
> 73 - Larry WØNFU
> larry_w at comcast.net