Greetings, TowerTalkians --
There were a couple of interesting developments in HF antennas that
were unveiled at the West Coast DX Convention this weekend.
First, it looks like the Bencher Skyhawk is approaching production and
shipment. It has performance of interest to HF operators and will be available
soon.
Next, Force 12 showed their new C-3XR - a real long-boom tribander. It
looks like the boom is around 30-32 feet and it has 3 elements on 20M, 4L on
15M and 7 elements on 10M! It can be fed with one or two feedlines and looks
like it has great potential. Obviously we're anxious to put it through its
paces.
M2 had their new full-sized 3L 40M beam installed on a US Tower. The
suggested retail is $1995 but the Visalia price was $1599 - a really
reasonable price for a lot of antenna. Maybe they'll have it on sale at Dayton
too.
Speaking of US Tower, they had a new controller hooked up to one of
their towers. It read out the tower height on the digital readout and operated
by remote control. There was a tower-mounted anemometer(?) that took the wind
speed and would automatically lower the tower when a specified wind speed was
detected. It's from Japan and may be available soon.
A new antenna company has jumped into the marketplace. For the last
year or so I've heard about some guys that had taken the linear loaded Force
12 80M beams, threw out the linear loading and added some coils in the
elements instead. Rumour has it that the mod increased the performance of the
antennas significantly. The only name I remember is Pete Dalton, W6KW. The
name is Ionic Wave Antennas. Probably more info in the future.
Our triband antenna test presentation was well received. Lew McCoy asked
some questions and thought we had done a good job. The bottom line is that the
big antennas (TH7, TH11, KT34XA and Bencher Skyhawk) all performed pretty
well. Expect the report available in June.
So lots is going on. I enjoyed meeting some fellow TowerTalkians at the
convention and appreciate their kind comments. Thanks to all!
Cheers, Steve K7LXC
--
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