Don,
You'll get lots of opinions, but I'll give you the real life experience we
just went through on 3B6. Our low-band station used a Titanex V160 for 160
and 80. For receiving we put up three different receiving antennas:
Beverage, loop, and pennant. All were connected via the appropriate matching
transformers and preamps as supplied by K0CS (Lance-Johnson Engineering).
(Steve has a web page where you can find out quite a bit about low band
receiving antennas. "www.qth.com/lance")
On 160m the pennant usually out-perfomed the Titanex, but they were always
pretty close. The loop and Beverage were clearly not as good in that
particular location (and location certainly affects Beverage antennas).
However, more germane to your query: The pennant was nothing short of awesome
on 80m. The directivity was worth at least 3-4 S-units, sometimes more. And
the pennant can easily be rotated by one person, no matter which
configuration you choose (the easiest being a "true" pennant configuration,
in which case only the "tip" needs to be moved in a circle around your center
support). On Agalega, we used a triangle (or delta) configuration, but one
person can still rotate that, it's just that both bottom tips need to be
moved. You also need more coax in that case, as the feed point also moves.
All of these were written up by Earl, K6SE, in the July 2000 QST.
If you purchase a setup like the ECP-1, which is the preamp, be sure to keep
your receiving antenna as far away from your transmit antenna as possible.
Otherwise you blow the preamp. All Steve recommended we do on 3B6, and we
did, was keep it beyond the radial field of the vertical. We had no trouble
at all. If you choose not to run with a preamp, he still sells the 18:1
transformer for $40, or you can simply wind your own if you choose.
I definitely will be putting up a pennant for this season - although the
Beverages will be up as well. But I'm doing so more for 80m than 160m.
Steve
PS: If you need a copy of Earl's article, I can fax, or scan and email. No
problem.
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