MW0MWZ Antenna Talk:

Ooops, its been rather too long since I updated this page, the inverted "L" has been built, tested and taken down. OK thats rather unfair to the antenna, the reasons it was only up for a short time are two fold, performance wasn't what I had hoped for, but thats because of my lacking ground installation and the fact that I was hoping to get a quart out of a pint pot.

So whats next, next up is the monoband slinky for 80m. Pulled out to whatever the available space is and hung as high as possible. My good friend Mark (MW0MAU) is building the baluns (400w capable, T200-2 wound with 1.5mm copper) - pictures of those to follow.

More on this antenna when it's compleate!

The GAP antenna is gone, sold to a local ham operator, now he has no excuses for not being on air HI!

MW0MWZ QTH Antenna History

At the moment the antenna's at the QTH are a 1/2 size G5RV and a GAP Titan DX. Both have mixed reviews and whatever I say about them it should be understood that at this time I dont have fill size 1/2 wave dipoles to compare them to - to that end I will only compare them to each other!

The 1/2 G5RV has a number of advantages and dis advantages, the antenna is quieter (lower noise floor) than the GAP on most bands but like most multiband single element designes with no traps I do really wonder about the efficiency!

The GAP Titan is a miltiband vertical with seperate elements for each band. If I had to liken its design to anything else I would say its most like a vertical off centre fed fan di-pole! - Confused? Most people who see it are!

Now the main question about the GAP, does it work? - Well yes, the RF goes in, hardly any comes back and I can be hered all over the world! I've even worked VK with it (VK7GK - Gerry, 40m with 400w real 5/9 both directions with me going over a european pile up) - At this point it should be said that when I was a 2W0 class licence holder I worked the same station with 50w on the 1/2 G5RV on 40m (Although I only just made it, dificult copy for Gerry) - read into that what you will! I have also spend some time running QRP with this antenna, under 2w from the Icom 756 I once had, QSO's through europe were easy but had to run all of the 50w to work USA.

So thats what we have, is it what I want? Well no but all of us have to live with *SOME* compromise! Our local club (GW6GW) will be running some antenna build evenings in the coming weeks, I plan to build a fan di-pole for 20m,15m,10m and possibly 6m and 40m too, 15m/40m are on harmonics too so I may well make that one element with 15m traps in. I also want to make somthing better for 80m too (possibly a 40/80 trap?), I'll update this page more when we start the process!

This has been on the to do list for a very long time, I guess the only reason its never been built at my QTH is that I have been spending too much time deciding what to do and not enough time doing.

So for your reading pleaseure take a look at this: 40/40 Trapped Inverted L