Topband: K9AY success!

Shoppa, Tim tshoppa at wmata.com
Tue Oct 9 09:55:33 EDT 2012


Last winter I had struggled some with a pennant.

Over the past weekend I strung up "half of" a K9AY in the treeline on the edge of my property (trees as supports). It's half in the sense that it's a diamond in the NE/SW plane but I don't have a NW/SW plane. It works wonderfully... I can remotely point it NE or SW, and get circa 15 to 20 dB rejection off the back as verified with real 160M listening over the weekend. Didn't hear much DX - maybe I could convince myself I could hear RI1ANF last night on 160M by ESP! But I heard G's and EA's and DL's in Europe calling for RI1ANF and verified that they come in from the NE but not the SW. Locations to my NW (e.g. Michigan), I didn't hear much difference between the two directions.

That's a great start, but if I wanted to set up the "other half" of the K9AY on a different property edge treeline, and get the perpendicular directions (NW and SE), can I use the same coax and switchbox? Maybe twisted pair to the perpendicular loops (maybe 50 feet away) Or should I use a second piece of coax to handle this other half-K9AY? Is there a huge payoff in getting the perpendicular directions too, or is half a K9AY good enough for a 160M receive antenna newbie like me?

Tim N3QE


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