Portable station, Jaybeam 6 Element VHF Quad Antenna

A old 2metre Jaybeam 6 Element VHF Quad Antenna on a 10 foot pole mounted on the front of a Landrover Defender for portable station experimentation. I plan on using the antenna whilst in a hilltop portable location for giving a few points away in VHF contests. I will mostly use it for 2m SSB (144Mhz) with my Yaesu FT857D.

In this movie the antenna is set between horizontal and vertical polarisation. Am just trying it like that and seems to be a workable compromise for general use.
Takes about 2 minutes to loosen the clamp on boom and rotate for proper horizontal or vertical work.

The antenna rotator is simply length of paracord, a jublee clamp and couple of turns around the pole with the two ends of the paracord fed into the cabin where I can pull either end to rotate clock or counter-clockwise.

On paper this antenna was marketed as having 10.9dB gain, 22FB.

I included a sleeve choke (1:1 Bazooka balun) at 1/4 wave length*coax velocity from the feedpoint (worked out about 341mm). This made the already low vswr quite broadband.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• HAM
• AMATEUR
• RADIO
• jaybeam
• 6Q
• QUAD
• antenna
• aerial
• FT857
• landrover
• portable
• station
• rotator
• homebrew
• VHF
• SSB

[Karl036]

Well done.

73..Karl

VK7HDX