station

In front of this picture you see the first segments of a wired tower. This will be 15m high in the first step but can be extended up to 30m. Below the 40m beam I will install an antenna for 10/12m and may be 15m. I'm searching for a solution that will not influence the 40m beam to much. May be a 3 element quad is suitable. The design can be found on the antenna pages. But I also have a 6 element long boom yagi for 10m which could be installed right above the top segment of the tower.

2005

As mentioned before I have installed the 10m beam below the 40m hexbeam. The influence is marginal. I have run a number of simulations with EZNEC and the hexbeam needs only 2m distance to the lower beam without any problems. Now we have about 4m between the baseplate of the 40m hex and the 6 element yagi for 10m. The yagi is mostly 1-2 S units better on 10m. But during opening and closing of the band it may be 2 or more S-units. Even the difference to hear it clear and work it or nothing.
As I was busy with work load by QRL and also with building hexbeams for others I have not much done on my own antenna system. The "to do" list is still very long.

The current antenna setup is:
a 6 ele yagi@13m for 10 m,
my hexbeam@17,5m for 15/17/20/30/40m (40m elements are at 19m) and also for 12m,
2 dipoles perpendicular for 80m @ 15m and
the 15m aluminum tower for 80/160m.

The tower can be toploaded with one of the 80m dipoles for both bands (80/160m)The feeding point of one 80m dipole is on top of the tower and can be short circiuted by 2 relais to the tower top. The dipole coax at the same time is also short circuited on top and at the bottom matching box.

2006

In the beginning of 2006 I left ABB and started my own business. This kept me more than busy. I build only a handful of hexbeams and have not been very active on the hf bands. Nevertheless a few changes happend. The 10m beam went up a bit on the tower and on its old place I installed a 5 ele 20m yagi. The 20m elements of my hexbeam are at about 18m. While switching between the hex @ 18m and the 5 ele @ 13m I have no difference in gain. So this 5 m in height are equalizing the gain. But the yagi of course has better F/B and side suppression. Another reason may be that the Hex is higher than the surrounding trees but the yagi is lower.
The crank up tower used as low band vertical has been replaced by a black fiberglass tower of 18m height. This one has about 20m wire helical wounded as a 80m vertical. With some isolators I have added an inverted L for 160m to the this fiberglass mast. The horizontal part slopes from 17m to 13m. My receiving impression is much better than with the military crank up tower of 15m height. Unfortunally I often cannot reach the DX I can hear. Here the bands are mostly very quiet. I have no QRM here, no industry and no neighbors causing any noise. My power seems to be to small ;-)

Equipment
The station consists of a FT1000D + HL2K amplifier (2x3-500Z) and a FT890 plus a 600 W PA (1xGU74). An antenna switch with interlocking to choose one of the 4 external hf coax cable coming from outside I have built already. Those of you who like details can look here. This one can be easily extended for more antennas. To prevent from hf interferences between the stations I use Dunestar bandpass filters (2 x model 600). One of the next projects will be a few BCD-decimal decoder to automate the antenna and filter selection. This is currently done by hand.

The foto shows Uwe, DK3WW preparing the setup for the German Christmas Contest in Dec. 2004. He took part from here with my FT1000D (80m) and his own FT1000MP (40m) as SO2R. He finished second place in 2004 and won in 2005.


	Our current installation

	We moved to the new location in July 2003. The property has about 2800 sqm or about 25.000 sq ft and is laying on the edge of a village of 2700 within the forrest. Surrounding trees are mostly pines with a height of about 15m. When I had finished most of main work at the house and finally the playground for the kids I erected the first antenna -a windom- in September 2003. From this time the design changed sometimes daily and is under permanent development. It needs a lot of time (and money) to be finished. The target is to have the possibility to work SO2R (single operator 2 radio) or M2 (multi operator 2 radio) from this QTH. Even in the forrest we have to arrange with limitations, which means that for every installation of more than 10m height you need a building permission from the authorities. This is usually not easy to get in urban areas in Germany.
	2003 To get the neighbours slowly used to antennas we started with a windom antenna hanging at 7m within the trees. The next step was a small reflected W beam (20-10m) on the roof. In late October 2003 I installed a 15m crank up tower. It is a military aluminum crank up tower. This is mounted insulated and used as a vertical antenna as well. In the first step it got about 60 radials between 20-60m each. Each radial consist of 4 x 0,5mm² copper wire. This were round about 2.5 km cummulated wire in the ground. The final installation will have about 180 radials with 8-10km wire alltogether. On top of the tower was the little hexagonal beam (reflected W). For 20-10m acting as the main antenna and for 80/160m short circuited to the mast top and acting as a top load. This little antenna brought the resonance frequency down for about 1 MHz.
	The foto shows the military crank up tower and reflected W beam in the winter 2003/2004. 2004 I had a heavy skiing accident in February 2004 causing me to stay in a hospital for a while. This time I used for a lot of antenna simulation work. When I physically was able to work again I changed the beam with a 40m+ version. I succesfully tested all calculated designs of multiband hexagonal beams. The performance on 40/30m supprised me seriously. I was able to run JA or W pile ups on 30/40m in May/June with my DL-call and the antenna installed at 15m height. Between a few pine trees a 80m dipole was installed (12-15m, hanging East-West). Our free standing tower was erected in December 2004. The tower itself is a commercial one with a height of about 12.5 m plus another 4.5m rotating aluminum mast before the beam comes. The antenna on the foto is a DL7IO-40-4. A hexagonal beam starting from 40m-15m. It has 2 elements for every band between 40-17m. The 40m elements also plays well on 15m. This foto shows the tower with the 40m beam. Right of the tower you can see the 80m dipole (hanging in E-W direction. Another 80m dipole is hanging SW-NE between the crank up tower and the free standing tower. You can see this on the foto below. This one is fed at 15m on top of the crank up tower and can also be used as a top load. For 80m I can use the 15m tower, the dipole or the tower with top loaded dipole. For 80m DX the tower alone is working best. On 160m I got best results with the tower top loaded with the dipole. In front of this picture you see the first segments of a wired tower. This will be 15m high in the first step but can be extended up to 30m. Below the 40m beam I will install an antenna for 10/12m and may be 15m. I'm searching for a solution that will not influence the 40m beam to much. May be a 3 element quad is suitable. The design can be found on the antenna pages. But I also have a 6 element long boom yagi for 10m which could be installed right above the top segment of the tower. 2005 As mentioned before I have installed the 10m beam below the 40m hexbeam. The influence is marginal. I have run a number of simulations with EZNEC and the hexbeam needs only 2m distance to the lower beam without any problems. Now we have about 4m between the baseplate of the 40m hex and the 6 element yagi for 10m. The yagi is mostly 1-2 S units better on 10m. But during opening and closing of the band it may be 2 or more S-units. Even the difference to hear it clear and work it or nothing. As I was busy with work load by QRL and also with building hexbeams for others I have not much done on my own antenna system. The "to do" list is still very long. The current antenna setup is: a 6 ele yagi@13m for 10 m, my hexbeam@17,5m for 15/17/20/30/40m (40m elements are at 19m) and also for 12m, 2 dipoles perpendicular for 80m @ 15m and the 15m aluminum tower for 80/160m. The tower can be toploaded with one of the 80m dipoles for both bands (80/160m)The feeding point of one 80m dipole is on top of the tower and can be short circiuted by 2 relais to the tower top. The dipole coax at the same time is also short circuited on top and at the bottom matching box. 2006 In the beginning of 2006 I left ABB and started my own business. This kept me more than busy. I build only a handful of hexbeams and have not been very active on the hf bands. Nevertheless a few changes happend. The 10m beam went up a bit on the tower and on its old place I installed a 5 ele 20m yagi. The 20m elements of my hexbeam are at about 18m. While switching between the hex @ 18m and the 5 ele @ 13m I have no difference in gain. So this 5 m in height are equalizing the gain. But the yagi of course has better F/B and side suppression. Another reason may be that the Hex is higher than the surrounding trees but the yagi is lower. The crank up tower used as low band vertical has been replaced by a black fiberglass tower of 18m height. This one has about 20m wire helical wounded as a 80m vertical. With some isolators I have added an inverted L for 160m to the this fiberglass mast. The horizontal part slopes from 17m to 13m. My receiving impression is much better than with the military crank up tower of 15m height. Unfortunally I often cannot reach the DX I can hear. Here the bands are mostly very quiet. I have no QRM here, no industry and no neighbors causing any noise. My power seems to be to small ;-) Equipment The station consists of a FT1000D + HL2K amplifier (2x3-500Z) and a FT890 plus a 600 W PA (1xGU74). An antenna switch with interlocking to choose one of the 4 external hf coax cable coming from outside I have built already. Those of you who like details can look here. This one can be easily extended for more antennas. To prevent from hf interferences between the stations I use Dunestar bandpass filters (2 x model 600). One of the next projects will be a few BCD-decimal decoder to automate the antenna and filter selection. This is currently done by hand. The foto shows Uwe, DK3WW preparing the setup for the German Christmas Contest in Dec. 2004. He took part from here with my FT1000D (80m) and his own FT1000MP (40m) as SO2R. He finished second place in 2004 and won in 2005. --> page top

Our current installation