K7PEH Antenna Page

Currently I operate with three antennas:

• Traffie Technology Hex Beam 5-Bander (20,17,15,12,10) at 36 feet.
• 300 foot horizontal delta loop at about 45 feet.
• VFH/UHF (2-meter/70-cm) dual-band J-Pole at 25 feet.

The photo to the right shows the Hex Beam just after my son-in-law Brian (pictured) and I installed it on the roof of the house. The hex beam is on a 10 foot mast with a heavy-duty TV style rotor. The base of the hex beam is about 36 feet above ground.

The horizontal delta loop runs between three tall cedar trees. I hired a tree climber to go up to about the 50 foot level in the tree to put anchors in place for running dacron halyard lines. The sides are roughly 130 feet by 130 feet by 50 feet. A little narrower then I would have desired but the antenna works great and I use it primarily for the low bands: 80, 40, and 30 -- and sometimes on 20. It is coupled with 450-ohm window style ladder line through a Palstar balanced antenna coupler.

The VHF/UHF antenna is now shown but it sits on top of a 10-foot mast on the right end of the house and it is fed by about 70 feet of low-loss coaxial cable.

Installing the Hex Beam