ANTENTOP- 01- 2018 # 022

Low Profile Antenna for the 30, 20, 17, 15, 10 and 6- meter Bands

Low Profile Antenna for the 30, 20, 17, 15, 10 and 6- meter Bands

Igor Grigorov, VA3ZNW

In the summer 2017, when the winter with winds and ice storm was far away, I decided to install a Low Profile wind and ice rain resistant antenna. Why I decided do this? There were some important reasons. My Beverage Antenna was remade. Now the antenna wire was not going along wooden fence but hang upped in the space.

About the antenna: http://www.antentop.org/021/Two_Wires_Beverage_Antenna_021.htm

Efficiency of the antenna is grown up but reliability went down. Canadian winter with strong winds and ice rain may very make my Beverage antenna down. So I need weather proof antenna in case if the Beverage antenna cannot stand the winter. Before I will give the description of the Low profile weather proof antenna, I want to say that the Beverage Antenna with honor has stand sever Canadian winter. However it was a small incident with the antenna in rainy autumn. The antenna was dropped down during CQ WW DX Contest.

Low Profile Antenna for the 30, 20, 17, 15, 10 and 6- meter Bands Placed on a Fence

The reason of this incident was home- made antenna insulator. The insulator was made from a thick plastic tube. Figure 1 shows design of the insulator. It is a very simple design. I used tens such insulators in my antenna design.

However, inside the tube opening, as I guess, some dust and water were penetrated, that then created a conductive channel between antenna and a guy (made from a copper wire in plastic insulation) that seems to have a resonant in the 15 meter band where I was operated in that time.

Insulator was melted and insulation on the guy as well was melted. It was happened at the power of my transceiver 90 W. Antenna was restored with help of commercial made high quality insulators.

After visual inspection of my Beverage antenna I found only two damaged insulators which were touching the molten guy. This case shows how important it is to break guy wires by insulators to prevent unwanted resonance in the antenna guys. Now, at last, we go to description of the Low Profile Antenna.

Figure 1

Design of Home- Made Antenna Insulator

Molten Insulator and Guy with Melted Insulation

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