HFU HF Underground
Technical Topics => Equipment => Topic started by: ChrisSmolinski on July 19, 2013, 1859 UTC
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Has anyone here tried a Lazy H antenna?
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No, but I think there was a mention of it in a book I have on cubical Quads (I think it's a book by Bill Orr?), I think they may be related somehow.
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IIRC Joe Carr's Receiving Antennas book had a section on the Lazy H, but I've never built one myself.
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Doing some further research and modeling, they're looking less and less impressive.
My goal is to put something up for fall/winter for the 48 meter band for Europirates. The big sky loop works well, but I'd like something with some gain toward Europe. I'm also looking at just putting a dipole (folded, for lower noise) up as high as I can, or possibly a smaller T2FD. From models, it really seems like you need to get up to about 80 ft to get good low angle radiation on 48 meters, and I don't know that I have any trees that tall.
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Do you have the height for a 1/4 vertical? They're not directional, but I've found that they tend to grab weak signals much better than a dipole.
I used one for the 60 meter broadcast band for years. It gave me audible signals earlier in the day than any antenna I tried there. My other antennas would be picking up up hets or zilch at the same time.
If you don't have the height for a vertical, a Beverage on the ground may do the trick if you've got the land oriented towards Western Europe to do it.
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Yes, I could certainly hang a 1/4 wave vertical for the 48 mb. I had shied away from vertical due to their reputation for picking up man made noise. Did yours have any problems in that area?
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Not a bit, but it might be my location? I'm on a hill.
There was a guy south of me who used, (I think?) an 80 meter vertical for dx'ing Europirates. His results were great. It was extremely well grounded as he used for ham work,too. Mine was just clamped to the spigot next to the house. It outperformed a double zepp I'd set up for the same purpose the year before. The zepp was actually the nosier of the two antennas.
Two, when the neighborhood Blue Hair Brigade starts acting up, the vertical can be pulled up for listening and lowered afterwards. Two minutes it's up, five seconds it's down.
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Pigmeat you and Fansome both have "BLUE HAIR"
;) ;)
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Hah! That's what you think. I have no hair above the ears. Plenty in my ears,but none above. And it's mauve thank you very much.
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Hah! That's what you think. I have no hair above the ears. Plenty in my ears,but none above. And it's mauve thank you very much.
thats basically PINK did you dye yur hair for AL again
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Hah! That's what you think. I have no hair above the ears. Plenty in my ears,but none above. And it's mauve thank you very much.
thats basically PINK did you dye yur hair for AL again
*I* did, but not on my head
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thats basically PINK did you dye yur hair for AL again
It is? I didn't know that. I thought mauve was the color of Bea Arthur's public hair back when she was above ground? (I don't want to imagine her pubic hair.)
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(I don't want to imagine her pubic hair.)
I would
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Have you considered a two element wire beam? Dipole with a director -- aim it towards Europe.
That might be worth a try.
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Have you considered a two element wire beam? Dipole with a director -- aim it towards Europe.
That might be worth a try.
Yes, I have considered that. I need to check out the tree situation, to see if I have them in the right locations to make it work. I won't be able to get the wires up high enough for good low angle radiation, but I can't do that anyway, so getting some gain toward Europe would certainly help.
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Boombox, you beat me to it.
Chris, you could use traps on both the dipole and the reflector to reduce the footprint. You would probably know better than I where to find online calculators for the coils.
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Hah! That's what you think. I have no hair above the ears. Plenty in my ears,but none above. And it's mauve thank you very much.
thats basically PINK did you dye yur hair for AL again
Good to see ya hanging around the asylum OR! :)
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Chris, what about an EWE? If you have two trees in line towards Europe it would be ideal, plus it's closer to the ground for tweaking.
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Chris, what about an EWE? If you have two trees in line towards Europe it would be ideal, plus it's closer to the ground for tweaking.
I think I do have two such trees, Sealord. Thanks for the suggestion, let me look into it. Do you have one?
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I was using one before I got into the phased verticals and had good results with it. In a sense, that's what the EWE is - two phased verticals in an endfire arrangement using the top horizontal wire connecting the two verticals as your phase line. The only downside is the antenna is very dependent on grounding so if your soil conditions are really, really bad then it might not give you as good of performance.
How far apart are your trees? I don't know of any tree distance/Freq. formula, but IIRC the rule of thumb is twice the distance per vertical height. I had two pines that were 14' apart so I set my verticals up 7' high and had good results. You do have to use a 3:1 transformer to knock it down to 50 ohms.