Since we somehow do not receive contributions from Slovak and Czech radio amateurs, I had no choice but to ask Jason Hissong (N8XE) for permission to translate and publish his contribution, which appeared on www.eham.net. I received an almost immediate reply from him, in which he said YES, he was actually very happy that his article would appear here and that he could share his experience with us. I will ask others from our region not to be embarrassed and send us their contributions, which we will be happy to publish. Thank you Jason Hissong (N8XE) for your permission! We are happy to publish your article on our Slovak HAM portal, translated by Oliver Bross MW3SDO.
You will read in the article
A few words for the introduction
One day I didn't have much to do, so I was just looking through articles on www.eham.net out of boredom, where I came across an interesting post by Štefan Katz (WB2WIK), which really interested me. I thought about his words and told myself that I had to try it too. I had a GAP Eagle DX vertical antenna before, but it didn't work very well, probably due to a fault in the connector. I decided to try vertical again, but now to go with my mind. My antenna farm so far consisted of an Alpha Delta DXLB+ antenna installed as an inverted V. This dipole allowed me to work on 160, 80, 40, 20, 15, and 10M and on WARC bands with a tuner. Soon, he should join me as well hexbeam, which will only be for bands 10, 12, 15, 17 and 20m. However, I would like something that would allow me to work on 30, 40 and 80 meters. Štefan wrote in his post that vertical is a good "go-to" antenna. I'm also an occasional contestant, and a vertical might be a good second antenna for me. So I decided to try again and share my experience with the whole HAM community. So how did it start…
I stopped at a local radio shop where I bought a Hustler 6BTV antenna. I also bought 600 m of wire, and a few other small things that are needed when assembling the radials to the antenna, as well as a 1.2-meter steel pipe. I brought everything home and started preparing the individual radials, specifically 68 radials of 6.096 meters in length. My table helped me with this, I wrapped the wire around his legs and worked out the necessary length. I did it 68 times and the movie that was playing on TV helped me. The next day I woke up really, really exhausted.
Next, he attached small rings to the ends of the wires. But that was my first mistake. First of all, it was quite strenuous, my hands hurt a lot, my muscles gave up. Secondly, I did not solder them, which would be very convenient when installing individual radials.
Radial installations
Throughout the long history of amateur radio, it is a tradition that when installing an antenna, the day must be cold and rainy, just like it was when I went to start this job! Perfect, I told myself. In the following picture you can see and have an idea of what I did with the already prepared radials. I created the so-called a ring of individual radials using nuts and bolts. In the beginning everything was fine, gradually as I added more and more radials, I came across another error that I mentioned at the beginning. The grass where I made my radial ring was quite tall and I couldn't move it anymore, I often tripped over individual radials that were pulled out of the small rings because they weren't soldered. Well, horror. I couldn't stand it. Coughed it up after attaching about 31 radials.
First impressions
After installing the individual radials, I connected a coax cable from the base of my antenna to the Ameritron RCS-4 (antenna switch) to make initial comparisons. I must note that most of the time I received equally strong signals from both nearby and distant DX stations in certain directions. The south and north stations had better signals on my dipole because its "nulls" are north and south. One evening I was listening to W1AW on 20m with a dipole on which he had an excellent signal. I switched later to vertical and W1AW was deep in the noise, very hard to hear. A few minutes later I heard ZS6 on 20m, which was clearly stronger on the vertical than on the dipoles, with a difference of about 1S.
With vertical I have made connections with 5C7N, HC8N, UN6P, HC4T on 20M, CY0MM, YV5OIE, PJ2/W0CG on 30M so far. It comes out to about the same compared to my dipole. So the power of the vertical is equal to the power of the dipole (valid at this point). Nothing particularly suitable for writing, but nothing to be ashamed of either. The vertical allows me to work with those stations with which I would have a problem with the dipole, mainly because of its directivity. My conclusion: vertical is a very good antenna, especially in connection with a dipole.
Let's look at a better "radial ring"
I don't really like my creation the most, especially regarding the ring made of radials, I would rather take some more elegant solution. I posted a question in the newsgroup QRP-L and I was recommended to look at the Comtek Systems site (http://www.comteksystems.com). They should have already prepared a ring for radials with 60 holes in the offer. And it would also include the iron rings that are needed to mount the radials on the ring. The instructions say that you can put up to two radials per ring, making up to 120 radials in total. The price was not high, only .95 in total.
However, I found that there was practically no difference between a home-made radial ring and a purchased one, which I actually assumed. But the purchased one had its advantages, namely the ease of installation and everything looked much nicer.
Adding the rest of the radials
I picked a gorgeous snow day to install the rest of the radials. It was fun watching my dog run around in the snow while I lay on the ground installing individual radials - wearing gloves, warm clothes, a heavy coat. However, I was comfortable and warm. It still took me almost 3 more hours to finish all the radials. There were now 59 of them in total. I eagerly ran to the radio station again...
I turned on my TRCV and switched to vertical. It was already dark, so 20m was closing slowly, but from 30m to 80m it was very lively. I looked at the speed of the stations broadcasting on 40m. Some had S and less compared to the dipole. I've only heard US operators though. However, the remaining stations were slightly more audible on the vertical compared to the dipole. But where did I notice a big difference? At 15m! I heard a really big difference in listening to the vertical compared to the dipole. I was really very pleasantly surprised at the difference heard in the higher bands.
But everything has a reason. The individual radials were 6m long, which is more than 1/4 of a wavelength at 10, 15 and 20 meters. On 30, 40 and 80 meters the length was less than a quarter of a wavelength. Performance indicates that vertical is better at higher bands than at lower ones. No, I'm not disappointed because most of the time the signals are the same on the vertical compared to the dipole anyway. However, I just happened to be listening to an English station on 40m, whose signal was better on the vertical than on the dipole.
Final evaluation
In my opinion, a vertical antenna is an excellent addition to any antenna farm. At the time I wrote this post, I also installed Hexbeam on my mast. I have to say that the Hexbeam is much better than the vertical. In comparison, however, the vertical antenna is better on lower bands, especially on 30 meters. I made some nice connections with T97M and 3B8CF on vertical a few days ago. However, there is one thing to keep in mind regarding an effective vertical antenna – the need to install as many radials as possible (up to 120). If you do this, you will be extremely happy with your vertical antenna! I am!