[TowerTalk] TH6DX Comments

[Dennis W0JX]

Gerry,
I want to add two things to the discussion. I bought a used TH6DX in 1977 and used it for 5 years before replacing with a 10-15-20 meter stack of Yagi's. It is an OK antenna to start with. It is great on 10 as it is four full size elements, mediocre on 15, and ok on 20. I used the "low phone settings" and with 100+ feet of coax the SWR on 20 at the low end was about 1.8.
The SWR on 15 meters was about 1.4 and I could never get it down regardless of fiddling with the driven element. 10 meter SWR was very good on CW and the lower part of the phone band.
Do NOT use theBN-4000 balun. While it is good electrically, the entire balun is potted with a very hard substance. After several years of being exposed to heating and cooling, the balun began cracking. Finally, the teflon coax inside pulled away from the coax connector leaving an open circuit. It is no fun to climb a tower to replace the balun.
Regarding putting up the TH6 in halves, I considered that. However, the TH6 is a heavy antenna and it would be very difficult to assemble the antenna this way while you are at the top of the tower unless you have a helper up there. What I did was assemble the boom and individual elements on the ground and put each element on the boom while I was at the top of my tower.
As others have said, there are better designs out there now. I replaced the TH6 with a 204BA, and two Wilson 4 el beams. These ran circles around the TH6.
To its credit, the TH6 is very rugged. After I left Minnesota, I put it back up at my new QTH in South Dakota before installing the Christmas tree arrays. The TH6 then went on a new higher 80 foot tower when I moved to Ohio and served until 2012 when it was replaced by a Tele HyGain TH-11DX. The reason for not putting up the individual yagis is that they were destroyed in a tornado while in SD. The TH-11DX has provided outstanding service on five bands.
73 Dennis W0JX