[TowerTalk] Strange happening with 10 Meter Beam

[john at kk9a.com]

Low SWR is not a bad thing. My homebrew 6el 10m beams have 1.1:1 SWR 28-29
MHz and they work very well.  Does the SWR increase outside the 10m band? 
Is the antenna pointing the correct direction?

John KK9A


To:	towertalk at contesting.com, Yuri <n2tta at yahoo.com>
Subject:	[TowerTalk] Strange happening with 10 Meter Beam
From:	Herbert Schoenbohm <herbert.schoenbohm at gmail.com>
Date:	Wed, 28 Oct 2015 09:30:21 -0400

For the CQ WW I put up a 5 Element HyGain 10 meter beam(LJ-105CA) I double
and triple checked all the element lengths and the VSWR is so low across
the band it really excited me. It also scares me a bit as up in the air
the VSWR is never above 1.3 to 1 from 28.0 to 29.5. The problem is that
signals are very weak on non existent when compared to my 3 element quad
at 80 feet which was the only antenna that worked on ten during the
contest and after.. ( The yagi is one a separate tower at 50 feet)

Here is what I have on it.
New piece of LMR-400 with good connectors fed directly to the insulated
(Hy Gain cup type) director. The beta rods were missing so I use the
direct feed to each director. (OWA type matching idea) I moved the first
director slightly closer to the driven element to obtain the correct match
at 28.4 Mhz Everything looks good but the 10 meter antenna is about as
good as a dummy load.


I have been building yagi's for over 50 years and have never had such a
strange problem. Even a beam with half the driven element missing after a
hurricane could hear something but what I have up can't.

Before I take it down I ask if anyone else had experiences with this
problem. It must be something very simple but I have checked everything I
can think of and still no joy here.


Please let me know
Herb Schoenbohm, KV4FZ
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