Field Day 2014

[WA1TRY]

Anyone in The Club ever run 2M/440 Horizontal with an amp?

Directional antennas generally don't work well for VHF on Field day. In the past we put up some "serious" 6m and 2m yagis.

We used to have a 30 foot tower mounted to the back of the town truck. Then we had a wide spaced 6m yagi 28 foot boom. Yes it was gigantic. On top of that was another wide spaced 2m beam. I think I have some pictures around here somewhere and will post them later. We had them setup with a rotor and even when we had the station manned 24/7 the contacts were minimal. The problem was that the beam had a LOT of gain, but was very narrow. If we were a few degrees off the station we had trouble. At times the band was wide open and we didn't know it because the beam was pointed the wrong way.

A few years later I decided to put up an experimental horizontally polarized omni-directional 6m antenna. This antenna had a perfect radiation pattern in all directions, and had a little over 6 db gain. It was a weird looking thing. But in theory it should have three times the gain of a halo.

We put it up about 20 feet and when the band opened "no matter what direction the skip was coming" .. we had Q5 QSOs .. Even though the station was not even fully manned, we broke a record for 6m contacts for our club that year.

After packing stuff up at the end of FD, I somehow managed to dump a bunch of stuff in the truck on top of the antenna and bent and broke it pretty badly. It was a bear to tune up but once it was tuned it was fantastic.

Lesson learned ... even a good omni-directional horizontal 6m antenna will work better than a super YAGI for FD.

Look into Squalo's or stacked Halo's for both 6 and 2m. You'll work a LOT more stations.

73, Rich WA1TRY