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I took down the I-10K & put up the Hy-gain Long John 105

Marconi

Usually if I can hear em' I can talk to em'.
Oct 23, 2005
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Houston
Well I got a beam up again @ about 28' feet with the .64 WRadio to the south about 30'.

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Hey there Eddie...now I should hear you a little better.

I took my Longjohn down back in 2000, it was up since 1976 (24 yrs), sure worked good.

But, I do like the Maco 105 that I have now, just a little bit better I think.
 
Thanks Larry, I emailed you a while back to get your measurements. I use the M105 setup to do this Hy-Gain, but the antenna was cut for 10 meters and the boom is a bit short of the Maco 5 element. I just left the last spack what I could. Only had it up a day now, so have not really had a chance to use it very much. Will let you know later when the DX rolls again down here. It has been real quite of late, so I wait.
 
Well Jim, you know the DX was really rolling in the last couple of days and I was in there working my Long John. Unfortunately early on Friday I decided to take it down and put an A99 above it and retune the beam a bit to bring it down some more into 11 meters. It was cut for 10 meters. I stuck it out there as far as I could and I closed the spacing between DR and D1 to 43” to see if it would still match up. It matched OK and the thing did come down to about 27.580 mHz, but that is as low as I can get it without adding some more tubing material to the elements. I do not like the spacing I have with Maco's optimized design for their M105, so I believe I will go with my own balanced design like my old homemade 4 element horizontal. I have a feeling it will be better than this one and I know it should have more gain I don't care what them computer wizards say about optomizing designs for yagis.

I was covering the Southeast coast pretty well today, with it even at about 18’ high and the A99 at about 23’ was working fine also about 1-5 S/units down from the beam at times. Had fun all day working the DX. We had a round of close in DX and I worked almost every corner of Texas from Tyler to El Paso, Lubbock, and south to Corpus and below, to out West to SA, and Austin, Waco. Did a little Louisiana and lots of Florida and the southeast coast areas all with less than a 100 watts only.

My pappy, Old Grandpa in Corpus, and I were smoking today even if I was sitting below the horizon at 18' high with the beam, and 23' high with the A99. I had planed on getting the beam up to about 38’ and the A99 at about 43’, but I will have to have some help raising it up. That old L J with the tapered 7/8” material and 3” x 24’ foot boom with an A99 on top, is a bit heavy for this 67 year old. Stay tuned to 27.385 lsb. If the DX is rolling, you may hear the CDX 390, Marconi, working this 5 element out there from Houston and of course Old Grandpa from Corpus is sure to be in there at times also with his new co-linear stacked array of 3 - 1/2 wave elements on the north side of his 250' tower that is supposed to cover about 250 degrees of the US, West to East plus Western/Central Europe.
 
Marconi

I will be listening for You(CDX390) here in PA. If I hear ya I will try to contact you but I been having mostly FL,KY,IL,ID,GA and other south southwest states. Conditions are great, I dont know why at this point in the cycle. most every freq. at about any time I turn radio on.

AP
 
AP. now I have placed an A99 up above the Long John. I have also installed my Wolf .64 on my roof deck at about 27' and it is working very well, even compared to the beam. I believe that beam antennas are less effective during periods such as we are currently having in Radio with all the noise and the varying of signals. As DX gets more frequent the beam antennas will start to take their place as the top communicator. It is really hard to beat a real good vertical during difficult conditions.

If DX continues good, then maybe we will hook up Pa to Tx.
 
Yeah, beams can be a strange animal sometimes.
Only worked beams for a short 5-6 months.
I still like and prefer the Omni groundplanes.
What Freq/s are you running for talking DX
Marconi???
 

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