[OKDXA] Mini Tribanders at low heights

[Calhoun, Charlie]

John, although my experience isn't exactly apples to apples, it's
somewhat close, so here's my $.02.  

Since the big ice storm last year took my wire antenna down I threw up a
Mosley TA-32Jr I had acquired.  I mounted it on a 10' pole and mounted
the pole to the side of a 10' tower section I already had stuck in the
ground, so it's not more than 20' up.  The wire dipole I had up was
tuned for 80m but I used the antenna tuner to run all the bands.  The
wire did pretty good.  I could work almost everyone I could hear, but I
couldn't hear many stations that were spotted.  When I moved from the
wire to the 2 element tri-bander I noticed a big difference.  I
literally threw the beam up there lickety split.  The hardware on it was
all rusted and I couldn't tighten the bolts down on the director and it
came off in a wind storm.  Still as a rotatable dipole it did better
than the wire.  I could tune it to 40m but it didn't do that well.  I
just put my wire antenna back up this past weekend and now I wish I had
spent the time repairing the beam.  

So, my experience is that the low tri-bander does much better than a
wire through a tuner.

Hope that helps a little. 

Thanks,
Charlie Calhoun, K5TTT 


-----Original Message-----
From: okdxa-bounces at mailman.qth.net
[mailto:okdxa-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of John Geiger
Sent: Monday, September 21, 2009 12:20 PM
To: towertalk at contesting.com; dx-is at yahoogroups.com;
okdxa at mailman.qth.net
Subject: [OKDXA] Mini Tribanders at low heights

After some antenna damage last year I am still contemplating what HF
antenna to go with.  I am now using a homebrew G5RV and have worked
about 105 countries on it this year.  I know that on the higher bands it
shows gain in some directions with nulls in other directions (like for
K5D on 20m).  

The only beam I would be able to get up right now would be one of the
smaller tribanders (like a MA5B or a Mosley Mini 32/33) at around 25
feet.  I know that is below the real minimium height to get such an
antenna to play on 20. So here is my question-is it really worth the
expense and effort to put a mini antenna at that height?  Would it show
much improvement over a G5RV.  I know the G5RV has nulls in some
directions, but I could fill those in with a rotatable dipole or a
vertical as well.

73s John AA5JG


      
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