You didn't mention budget. Among my collection of skywire and aluminum I
have a Hy-Gain Hy-Tower multi-band vertical that transmits equally well
in all directions (or equally poorly if you are a glass half empty
type.) No rotator, controller, or much maintenance. Very good
wind/storm/ice survivability. (I have a 160m kit to put on It (inverted
L.) It does pretty good on 80, 40, 30, 20, 17, 15, 10m. Sometimes
depending on band, conditions, distance to contact I can do a few dB
better with a 90x180 Carolina windom off center fed dipole but over 90%
of the time the Hy-Tower does as well or better than the OCF dipole.
This is a robust low maint good performing antenna. It is designed to
be free standing on one cubic yard of concrete and comes standard with a
hinged tilt base which makes iterative tuning sessions fairly simple and
easy to do. A couple men can walk it up or down. I built a simple rig
with a small manual winch for single handed raise/lower. I get fussy
about tuning the various stubs (aluminum tubing not coax stubs) which
resonate on some bands so a winch operated raise/lower capability was
handy for iterative tuning sessions. The raise/lower winch accessory
could be shared among the array and not need one each per antenna.
An array of these (4 each antennas in a rectangular arrangement as per
the instruction manual gives you steerable beam forming capability. As
an alternative to conventional towers, rotators, controllers and yagis,
you might consider an array of Hy-Gain Hy-Tower antennas. From the
ground up they are a 24 ft galvanized steel tapered lattice tower with
several lengths of telescoping aluminum tubing above that for a total
height above ground of 52-53 ft.
I have a picture of one mounted on top of a barn with 4 Phillystran guys
at the 24 ft level (with guys the custom base didn't have to be so
complicated to spread the load.) The picture is on my QRZ page.
Patrick NJ5G
On 10/4/2015 9:18 AM, Rudy Bakalov via TowerTalk wrote:
Looking at the number of states worked during CQ WW RTTY it is pretty obvious I
need antennas for working the US and Canada on 20-15-10 from my VE3 QTH. I'd
appreciate any and all suggestions.
Currently considering 1) vertical dipoles and 2) a curtain of 3 stacked dipoles
(or inverted Vs) from 10' to 30'.
Anything else? Do keep in mind that from VE3 the US is from ~160 to ~330
degrees azimuth and I do not want to rotate the antenna.
Rudy N2WQ
Sent using a tiny keyboard. Please excuse brevity, typos, or inappropriate
autocorrect.
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