Thanks for the reply Bill. I will certainly take a look at the 4-square. And I agree about my unterminated long wire. That is how I got to this point when looking to implement a Beverage the right way. I knew I was pretty far off when I looked it up in the ARRL books ;-)
I planned on trying to construct two of them in opposite orientations, I just thought the K9AY might be ok for the in between orientations. Thanks for the great feedback and I'll take a look at that 4-square. 73, Dave W8FGU -----Original Message----- From: Bill W4ZV <[email protected]> Date: Sun, 26 Jul 2009 19:24:04 To: <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [Elecraft] [OT] Diversity Receiving Antennas Dave Van Wallaghen wrote: > > So my question to the group is, for those using diversity reception (or > separate receive antennas), and using a K9AY - does it perform well on > the HF bands for this purpose? I would also like any input from those > who have both Beverages and K9AY for comparison. And, does it make sense > to use the setup as I described? Since I can only run Beverages in a > couple of directions, I thought the K9AY use in the other directions > would cover a lot of bases. > I've never used a K9AY but I know it's S/N is several dB inferior to a decent Beverage. There's a good comparison of RX antennas below: http://www.w8ji.com/receiving.htm (scroll down to comparison chart) Another comparison in in ON4UN's Low Band DX-ing (4th edition) on page 7-97. The short answer is...the K9AY is better than nothing, occupies little space and can be switched in 4 directions...but it's not in the same ballpark as a good Beverage. I'm also not sure how well the K9AY works on the higher bands, but you might want to consider a RX 4-square which can be comparable to a good Beverage in 4 directions and which can be used up to 30 MHz. DX Engineering and HiZ Antennas both make broadbanded RX 4-squares that work well at HF: http://www.dxengineering.com/Sections.asp?ID=117&DeptID=12#Top http://www.hizantennas.com/ These systems are not cheap but should work much better than a K9AY. BTW, it's really doubtful your Beverage is actually working correctly. Both ends should be terminated in the characteristic impedance (~500 ohms) to work correctly, so you need a non-inductive 470 ohm resistor on the far end and a 9:1 matching transformer on the feed end. Transformers can be made to work well up to at least 20m (maybe even 15m) but require some care in construction. This is not the place to go into a Beverage tutorial but there is a wealth of information on W8JI's website and in ON4UN's 4th edition (or you can wait for his 5th edition which should be out next year). 73, Bill W4ZV -- View this message in context: http://n2.nabble.com/Diversity-Receiving-Antennas-tp3331122p3331589.html Sent from the [OT] mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[email protected] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[email protected] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
