Sunday, March 15, 2015

Testing Antennas for the DXpedition

Omni-Angle

I put up the 17m OmniAngle to see how it would perform in a real world situation.  Height AGL is about 27 feet.  SWR was 1.2 at 18.069 MHz so tuning was OK.  7QAA was on the air. 7QAA is some 8100 miles in Africa.  I was in the pileup with about 80 watts of power - barefoot on the KXPA100.   7QAA was peaking out at S4 on the PX3 with the Hexbeam pointed 87 degrees.  The omni angle was about 1/2 S unit down on the Hex.   I decided to work 7QAA in the pileup with the Par Omni-Angle at 80 watts.   Well - what do you know, without turning the amp on I was able to work 7QAA.  The Par Omni-Angle was on my deck.




Crank-IR

Wow.  This antenna is super easy to put up and tune.  Got the SWR at 1.2 at first try.  Moved the radiator an inch to tune it down to 1.0.  The radial is super easy to set-up.  I already used my NY4G call.  I used my ex call AJ4YM to see if 7QAA will come back. (Side Note - NY4G is so much easier to key up than AJ4YM) .Two calls at 200 watts and no problem.  Again, the CrankIR was only down 1/2 an S unit on receive.  The CrankIR was half an S unit higher noise floor.

The video below was only a receive comparison


Here are images  of the CrankIR 


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