I have not had a beam for 6 meters since I have been in Georgia. The last
couple of years I have thrown together a
square quad loop antenna and fed it with open wire line and tuned it. This
antenna worked good. I could work just about everything I could hear.
I tried something "new" this year and it was simple to build and doesn't take
much room. I was reading the W4RNL antenna webpage which talks about
rectangular loops. A
square loop has an impedence of 125 ohms at the feed point so you need to tune
it. If you make the loop rectangular where the vertical part is two times
longer then the horizontal part and feed it at the middle of the bottom
you will be able to feed it directly with 50 ohm cable. It
also has a litlle more gain then a square loop. See
http://www.cebik.com/vhf/cs.html
Here is a quick and easy way to build one of these loops. You will need some
1/2 inch PVC pipe , on SO239 connector and about 21 foot of antenna wire.
1) Cut two pieces of PVC pipe about 3.5 foot long.
2) Drill holes near the ends of each pipe to run wire through.
3) Run wire through holes and make the vertical part of the
loop 6.5 ft and horizontal part 3.5 inches long.
4) Solder one end of wire to center of SO239 and the other
end to the ground.
5) Run a piece of rope thru the top piece of PVC pipe to
hang the antenna.
It took me about a half hour to build this from scratch and then hang it up in
a tree. Mine is about 35 feet high.
I think this might make a good rover antenna or even a 2nd antenna for those
with beams that you could switch to it instead of turning your beam all the
time if someone calls you off the side.
73, Jeff
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