Bill Egerton GM8RBR

Hi Hex nuts,

Just had a nice write up off Bill GM8RBR on his experence of the G3TXQ Hexbeam, thought I would share it with you all, Many thanks Bill.

HEX BEAM IN SKYE

HI ANT

Firstly I am very satisfied with the hexbeam you supplied. The following details my experience building, mounting and using the hexbeam.

The hexbeam arrived well packaged and with no damage to the packaging or its contents.

The assembly took me approx 2-3 hours without any problems following the detailed assembly instructions. The parts are well manufactured and were assembled easily.
The assembled hexbeam was tested, mounted on an 8ft fibreglass scaffold pole, and the SWR reading across all bands did not exceed 1:1.3. At this time American west and east coast stations were contacted. Because of the wind conditions we experience I tywraped the 17 and 20 metre wire elements to the  mounting fixings on each arm to eliminate wind drag on the wire distorting the correct shape of those elements on
the antenna.

Mounting the hexbeam on a Tenamast took a few hours with the assistance of two local amateurs, scaffolding and ladders etc. due to the size of the assembled hexbeam and nearby obstacles ( mainly trees). The hexbeam is mounted using a 8ft fibreglass scaffold pole above two cushcraft 13 element 2 mtr yagis . The height of the hexbeam with the mast retracted is approx 27ft.( estimated 45ft when extended).

The hexbeam has been  used at this height due to the high wind and driving rain conditions we have experienced. The bad weather has not had any noticeable effect on the operation of the hexbeam and contacts have been logged in New Zealand , Japan, the east and west coast of USA and the far east. Contacts have been logged on all bands ( most on 17 mtrs ) with the exception of six mtrs . Received checks on six mtrs using the Inverness beacon are good compared with a 5 element  yagi , but no contacts have been made on this band.

Direct comparisons using a Cushcraft R7000 vertical antenna indicate that the hexbeam has increased gain of 2-3 db and significantly reduced background noise using a Icom Pro 3 as a test unit.

The next step is to wait for the better weather to extend the tenamast to its max height and see what effect this will have. It should improve the 6 mtr coverage .

Thanks for sharing this with us Bill,

73's Ant MW0JZE