[ICOM] AH-4 help

[Larry Winslow]

I figured I might be opening Pandora's box by 
mentioning the actual antenna. It has worked well 
for me although I have no way of comparing the 
actual performance. One thing I did find, with 
the help of tech support at B&W, is that you 
CAN'T using small diameter coax. I had a run of 
good mini RG-8 and the antenna was next to 
useless. I emailed B&W and was told to put in 
RG-8 or RG-213. That made a dramatic difference 
in the antenna - it went from useless to performing very well.

I'm severely limited as to what I can put up. For 
one thing, the homes are close to each other here 
in the area of Seattle that I live in. On top of 
that, is the structure of the father-in-law's 
apartment building. It has a flat roof and the 
outside vertical surfaces are backed by 
chicken-wire. Both of these restrict what I can 
do. My goal right now is to at least get something up.

We're sort of stuck here. Father-in-law is 
legally blind and very unstable when he tries to 
walk so we're taking care of him. When he passes 
away, we'll be getting our own home & then I can 
put my tower and beam back up. Only good thing 
with this situation is that we don't have to pay 
any rent for a very nice 3 bedroom apartment.

73 - Larry WØNFU
larry_w at comcast.net

At 07:01 AM 12/8/2005, you wrote:

>MIke and all;
>
>   I have used the B&W antenna for several years 
> now. The only problem I have is that I have to 
> replace the suspension rope every coulple of 
> years due to UV rot and general wear and tear.
>   You will find that many individuals out 
> there, monoband purests all, will tell you that 
> you might as well transmit into a dummy load. I 
> don't know why. I can do all the communicating I desire using my setup.
>
>   Good luck with your instalation and do not 
> hang anything over, under or even near power lines.
>
>   Dave WD9BDZ
>
>
>"Michael P. Olbrisch" <mike2004 at elp.rr.com> wrote:
>
>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
>
>
>----
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>
>----
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