[NLRS] Anybody have experience with multi-band feeds?

[James French]

Hello Dave.

I have had experience with the WA3RMX feed that Zack and Gerald have mentioned 
and it seems to work very good for the lower bands that it is designed for. 
Just don't go over the recommended power limit...:) My first Microwave elmer in 
Florida, Jim, W4APV (W4 Armored Personel Vehicle as he referred to himself in 
1994), had one that we used to play with and we smoked it with 100 watts 
easily.

I have played with the 10Ghz vivaldi of Kent's and am very impressed with it. 
It easily was able to receive a ten watt signal from almost 200 km out across 
Lake Erie from Sterling State park in Monroe, MI (EN81hv). This was without a 
dish and sitting on the tailgate of Lloyd, NE8I's pickup truck. I haven't 
tried it with a dish yet as I need to get a new vivaldi PCB as I lost the one 
I had showing it off at MUD in 2008..:(

I have a few of the multiband vivaldis but have only used them for testing on 
the signal generators I have here so far.

I will admit that the vivaldis will be easier to connect to your equipment and 
do stand up to a beating also.

James W8ISS
=====
On Thursday 03 February 2011 19:02:01 David Palm wrote:
> I have been corresponding a bit with WA5VJB about the use of one of his
> log-periodic yagis as a multi-band feed for a dish.  (He actually
> recommends  using one of his newer Vivaldi PCB antennas, which he says
> should be a bit easier to connect and a bit more efficient in this role.)
> 
> I realize that this is at best a compromise solution on every band, but it
> is extremely attractive to me for a rover set-up to be able to use the same
> dish from, say, 2.4 - 10 GHz.  I was thinking that I'd try to build a loop
> yagi for 2.4 GHz and try using the multi-band dish on 3.456 MHz and up (if
> I get the equipment working in time.)  But you get the drift.
> 
> I've read the article that Paul Wade, W1GHZ wrote about this (
> www.w1ghz.org/antbook/conf/WA5VJB_LPA_feed.pdf) and the two take-aways from
> that were that 1) it should work and 2) it seems best to optimize the
> system for the highest band and then just take your lumps on the rest.
> 
> I'm wondering if anybody has any experience on this that they could share?
> I'm interested in having something ready for the August contest and am
> starting to plan now.  If you have other suggestions for multi-band
> antennas for the rover, I'd be very interested to hear your suggestions.
> 
> 73,
> 
> David  W9HQ