I was asked several times (even in CW over the air) what kind of antenna I was using and this post shall give an answer.
My requirements for a SOTA antenna are as follows:
– TRX with automatic antenna tuner (in my case Elecraft KX3 with KXAT3)
– multiband from 60 m to 10 m
– instant QSY without leaving the operating position
– simple to construct and to errect (no duct tape, no Velcro)
– survives high winds on a mountain top
For all my SOTA activations I used two different antennas. Initially I started off with a 2x 22 ft long doublet (2x 6.7 m), a CQ553 450 Ohm feeder and a 4:1 or 1:1 or no balun at the TRX. I soon found out that not all mountains in HB9 offer enough space to deploy a doublet and therefore I switched to a 43 ft (13.1 m) Inverted-L with a few “short” radials. There are many articles on the web about the performance of a 43 ft long vertical antenna. It’s a good performer on the lower bands (40 – 15 m) but turns into a cloud warmer (high elevation angle) on higher bands (12 and 10 m). I already had a 7 m long SOTApole and I wondered what would happen if I use a 6 m long vertical wire section and pulled the remaining 7.1 m to the side.
Construction details:
Antenna:
13.1 m stranded copper wire
4 mm banana plug
Acrylic glass (Plexiglas) insulator at the end
10 m reepschnur and 1 peg
BNC to 4 mm adaptor (KX3 comes with a BNC connector)
Radials:
Several “short” radials (5 x 4 m in my case) with stackable 4 mm banana plugs. One good reference is “BCC-Handbuch 4. Auflage” on page 2-13 (only in German available). For 16 radials make them 0.05 lambda long.
Pole:
7 m SOTApole with top antenna insulator and guying kit (rarely used)
With MMANA-GAL basic v. 3.0.0.31 I ran a few simulations against my Inverted-L (Ground: Real, Dielectric: 13 and Conduct: 5 mS/m)
On all bands (even 6 m) this antenna offers omni-directional pattern and low take-off angle.
- Geometry of the Inverted-L
- Results for the calculations. All R+jX can easily be tuned by e.g. KXAT3.
- 40 m: 3D Far Field Plot
- 30 m: 3D Far Field Plot
- 20 m: 3D Far Field Plot
- 17 m: 3D Far Field Plot
- 15 m: 3D Far Field Plot
- 12 m: 3D Far Field Plot
- 10 m: 3D Far Field Plot
- 6 m: 3D Far Field Plot – even 6m looks good.
Following pictures show a few details on the construction of my 13.1m long Inverted-L and setup on SOTA mountain tops.
- 4 mm banana plug, 13.1m stranded wire, acrylic glass insulator and 10m reepschnur (3mm diameter).
- 4 mm banana plug. I prefer a screw-version and wire-end sleeve (Aderendhülse) for the stranded wire.
- The end of the 13.1 m wire. On the left a top antenna insulator (slide it over the top section of the pole), in the middle a lustre terminal (Lüsterklemme) followed by an acrylic glass insulator and 10 m reepschnur (I use a figure of eight (Achterknoten)).
- Move some of the wire insulation into the wire-end sleeve (Anderendhülse). It will survive vibrations much longer.
- 5 “short” radials on a wire winder. After the activation simply take all 5 plugs as a stack and wind them onto the winder.
- The stackable 4 mm plug I had on hand.
- HB/AI-012: After the cow tasted one radial I replaced them inside the fence 🙂
- HB/OW-024: Kind of elevated radials.
- HB/NW-018: Most common setup on a SOTA hill.
- HB/VS-102: Luxury setup – wooden cross as second support for the Inverted-L …
- HB/VS-102: … and a table for the shack and handrail as SOTApole support.
- GW/SW-001: Inverted-L dancing in high winds. Pull the wire in the direction of the wind.
- GW/SW-002: In snowy conditions use high visible wires and mark/paint alloy pegs as well. Did you ever search for alloy pegs in snow …
- GW/SW-014: Another wintery setup. Instead of Inverted-L a kind of Inverted-V is also possible.
How does the Inverted-L perform?
I used this antenna on more than 100 activations and I never failed to qualify a summit. It survived high winds in GW and winter conditions in GW and HB9. DX wise I worked VK, HS, K, VE, UA9, … and all over Europe in CW using max. 10 Watts. So far I didn’t perform a side by side comparison between an Inverded-V and -L. Depending on the ground (soil, granite, …) the impedance of the antenna changes but engaging the ATU TUNE button on the KX3 for a 2nd time led to a low SWR.
HF Terrain Analysis (HFTA)
HFTA is part of the ARRL Antenna Book and let you simulate take-off angels of horizontal (no verticals are supported) polarised antennas against your terrain. I was using terrain profile of my Contest-QTH direction 30 degrees for the analysis.
- This is the terrain profile QTF 030 with my antenna in the top left corner and 6 m above ground. Red line: my actual terrain and light blue I moved the antenna 100 m back on flat terrain.
- 20 m: blue line shows a dipole 6 m above ground over flat terrain. The red line shows the same dipole over the terrain shown in the first picture. The green resp. light blue line show what happens if I move the dipole 5 m, resp. 10 m back.
- 20 m: now I move the antenna 50 m, resp. 100 m back. For take-off angles below 10 degrees I still see an advantage against flat ground, above 10 degrees my terrain behaves like flat ground.
- Now the same simulation on 40 m instead of 20 m. Here you can clearly see the benefit of a hill top QTH. BTW: 6.5 % of all QSO within Europe are using a take-off angle of only 2 degrees!
- 40 m: and again what happens if I move my dipole 50 m, resp. 100 m from the drop off.
Inverted-L against AIM 4170C
I setup my SOTA Inverted-L at my Contest-QTH and used the AIM 4170C to measure the impedance of the antenna.
- 13.15 m long Inverted-L with 5 x 4 m radials on the ground.
- Just below the SOTApole the AIM 4170C is located and is connected to an USR-WIFI232-602 which acts as a RS-232 to WLAN converter. The software application for the AIM 4170C runs on the PC conveniently sitting in the shack.
Freq(MHz) | Rs | Xs | Zmag |
5.35 | 41 | -118 | 125 |
7.03 | 63 | 177 | 188 |
10.12 | 2’451 | 3’132 | 3’977 |
14.06 | 61 | -412 | 416 |
18.08 | 208 | 150 | 257 |
21.06 | 1’324 | -138 | 1’331 |
24.90 | 147 | -344 | 374 |
28.06 | 214 | 27 | 216 |
50.10 | 135 | -6 | 135 |
These value can be matched easily with the KXAT3 tuner inside the KX3.
Update: 20210808
As mentioned by Gerard, VK2IO on https://reflector.sota.org.uk/t/dx-s2s-attempt-easter-saturday-31st-march-2018/17122/42 he added a link with an extra 5 m section to give better 80 m performance. One of my random radial is 6.34 m long which I will reuse as extension for my radiator: 13.1 m + 6.34 m = 19.44 m. That should work fine for 80 m 🙂
to do:
– side-by-side comparison between Inverted-V and -L