Beam Antennas For Limited Space

  I don't have enough space for a big beam antenna. I have certainly heard this quite a bit as I read stories on the internet. I myself have the same issue. My property is less than one quarter acre and to make it worse, it's a corner lot. I have very little backyard and the side yard has the electrical lines coming to the house. I do not have a big chimney and my better half would kill me if I put holes in our fairly new roof. I my self do not want to do that either.

Yagi Antenna

  I started looking for different antennas and ideas as to what I could fit and where on the property. I do not want to upset any neighbours. We are also planning on moving in the next few years, so I do not want anything too permanent. At this time I have a 30 foot push up mast wall mounted to a small shed and four guy ropes to it. It has a vertical imax 2000 on it. I also have one leg of my dipole coming to it. My dipole is a g5rv lite and it does pretty good.
  I thought about maybe moving the vertical and putting a full size rotatable dipole such as a Comet H422 on it. The only problem is that turning it for east / west direction it would be slightly over the neighbours property. The next idea I had was maybe a moxon antenna, but depending on the chosen frequency it would be too large. 10, 15, or 17 meters would fit pretty much. There are many different designs for a Moxon Antenna. You will see the 17 Meter Moxon below and a free calculator for Moxon designs. Cubical Quad antennas for 10 to 20 meters would still be too much to fit. I did think about the rotatable dipole in the V type set up and it would be close, but probably okay.

    I did see some small size beams by T.G.M. Communications. They are small enough and do get some pretty good reviews on eham. The only issue I have is the price. At this time they are out of my price range. Maybe in the future I will look more into that. Here is a link to TGM Antennas http://www.tgmcom.com/  . Mosley Antennas have some small space beam antennas that are not bad. The reviews are for the most part pretty good at eham. The only problem once again is that they are out of my price range. Here is a link to the Mosley website http://www.mosley-electronics.com/pages/amateur.htm . I also looked into the Cushcraft MA5B antenna. It has a pretty good rating and the reviews are pretty good at eham. Here is a link to the Cushcraft website http://www.cushcraftamateur.com/ .Price is a little to expensive for me. I have looked into the hex beam, which seems to be pretty good. Buying it is too much for me to cover a wide range of frequencies. I have looked into building one for 20 meters and then expanding to other bands later. The only other problem would be manoeuvring it in the small space. Here are some links to Hex beams http://midcoast.com/~w1gql/hex/hexbeam.htm and http://www.g3txq-hexbeam.com/ . Here is a link to DX Engineering’s hex beam kit http://www.dxengineering.com/parts/dxe-hexx-1tap-2 and their multiband hex beam http://www.dxengineering.com/parts/dxe-hexx-5tap-2 .
 

Moxon Antenna

    There are other small space antennas out there, such as hygains small 10,15 and 20 meter beam antenna and butternuts butterfly beam antenna. I have looked at building a small beam antenna like the wire beam antenna. Here is a link to the wire beam http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~hansongr/Miniyagi.htm . I finally decided to go with a rotatable multiband dipole by MFJ. It covers a few frequencies I like and is not very large. I checked reviews at eham and they were not too bad. The price was a little easier for me at this time. Here are the reviews at eham, so check out the link http://www.eham.net/reviews/detail/5737 . Here is a link to the MFJ website http://www.mfjenterprises.com/Product.php?productid=MFJ-1775 . So when spring gets here depending on how much longer we will be here in this house I will get it together. I may put it on the shed on a tripod up around 15 to 20 feet.

Cushcraft MA5B

    One other idea I have been thinking about is using some of the MFJ, Workman or Ham Stick antennas in a small beam antenna. I could build a small two element beam for under one hundred dollars. I may go for the 17 meter band. I know that the power handling is not that high and the bandwidth may be narrow. It may be okay with my antenna tuner. I do not have an amplifier, so power would be low. Here is a link to the website where I read about this antenna http://www.ve3sqb.com/hamaerials/ve6vk/ . Ham sticks can be a little expensive, but the workman and the mfj antennas are a little cheaper.

   Well maybe our next house will have some property so I can get something better up in the air. I will most likely build something, because I love the designing and building of projects. That's what I love about the hobby.

  Thank You for Reading from Dan KC2YTI 73s.