[CQ-Contest] Antennas for SO2R

[Andrew Roos]

Hi All

I'm new to contesting, a few of you may have worked me in the ARRL
international DX CW contest or in CQWW WPX CW last weekend. I used both of
these as "shakedowns" of my equipment, plus practise for myself!

I recently moved into a new home and am planning an antenna installation.
The house is on about 1300 sq. m. (1/3 acre) so I'm not talking an antenna
farm; rather a single (hopefully 18m) tower with a well chosen antenna or
two on top, supplemented by wire antennas on the low bands. That's as much
as I think I'll be able to get away with, I've already received some
objection to my application for a tower from a couple of neighbours.

I recently read about SO2R operating (thanks to the contesting.com poll) and
it sounds like something I would like to do in a year or two (for the
moment, SO1R is quite enough of a handful). Especially since my YL (and soon
to be XYL) is also a ham and although she's not yet into contesting it would
also be nice to be able to work multi-two if we want.

So what I would like to do is put up a tribander which can be fed using
separate coax feeds for 20, 15 and 10m. Then with the correct switching and
filtering I can run either SO2R or multi-2. Note that due to neighbour
problems, multiple towers are not an option, nor can I put too many antennas
on one tower (two antennas at 18m is about the limit, one would be better).
I know the Force 12 C-31XR allows separate feedlines. However that antenna
is just too big for my location, and the smaller antennas in the Force-12
range like the C-19XR and C3 do not appear to allow seperate feeds for
different bands.

So do any of you good folks know of any good small tribanders with seperate
feeds for each band? Or alternatively, am I going about this the wrong way
and do you have a better suggestion? (Short of buying a large farm :).

Many thanks
Andrew ZS1AN