Re: New K3 User and New Ham

Posted by Phil Hystad on Jan 05, 2010; 6:40pm
URL: http://elecraft.85.s1.nabble.com/New-K3-User-and-New-Ham-tp4253024p4256645.html

Steve,

Your tree may be an opportunity for putting up a horizontal or sloped delta loop antenna.  The lowest operating frequency would depend primarily on the total length of wire you put up.  A total length for a loop antenna should be close to the wavelength of your lowest frequency of operation but with a good tuner there is a lot of room to play.

A friend of mine has a sloped delta loop with one corner high up in a palm tree (about 75 feet up) and the other two corners are at roof top level stretching the 50 feet across the length of his house.  I think he has about 280 feet of wire so you can see that it would be a narrow delta loop (similar in fact to one that I have).  But, his performance over the years from 80 meters on up to 10 meters has been good.

I also have a delta loop with one corner up a fir tree about 70 feet and the other two corners in two other fir trees about 55 feet apart from each other and each up to about 50 feet height.  I couple that using a Palstar BT1500A balanced line antenna tuner -- I feed the antenna using 450 ohm window style ladder line.  It is my best antenna.  I also have a Traffie 5-bander Hex Beam which is also a very good antenna.

73, phil, K7PEH


On Jan 5, 2010, at 10:27 AM, KC2VNI wrote:

>
>
> Thanks for the many fine comments. I only have the 1 tall tree. It is
> approximately 25-30 feet high. It is dead so there is no way I am going to
> harm it (accordingly, this is not a concern).
>
> Here's the "take-away" I got from reading your many fine suggestions thus
> far:
> - Make sure you do some research on the type of antenna you want to get. (I
> am an electrical engineer by background but RF engineering and antennas is
> NOT my strong suit.)
>
> - Make sure you get some height to your antenna. I purchased the Buddi Pole
> system BUT I understand that any form of antenna like this is NOT going to
> give you good performance.
>
> - It is probably a good idea to use some of the local hams here to get some
> help with the antenna system as they can help out with picking this.
>
> - Battery power may or may not be appropriate for continuous operations of
> the equipment.
>
> - I am not so concerned about getting a "Ferrari" for a radio as my 1st one
> (in lieu of something closer to a Chevy) as I believe that the manual is
> fairly well laid out. The big concern here is context. Example: it's nice to
> know HOW to perform an alignment of the radio BUT the question for the
> beginner is "What does alignment actually do?".
>
>
>
>
> --
> View this message in context: http://n2.nabble.com/New-K3-User-and-New-Ham-tp4253024p4256584.html
> Sent from the [K3] mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
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