HLP-6 6m Halo Antenna - | Ham Radio
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 9 ก.ย. 2024
- The 6m Band is often known as the "Magic Band" because it offers unpredictable surprises for Ham operators all ver the world. It can be dead for days and then open up for long distance contacts. It's full of fun one day and frustration the next. But, here is a handy antenna that is low cost and may enable you to enjoy the fun on a budget. .
I omitted to mention the adjustable beehive capacitor that helps with matching adjustment. See close up in video.
6m Halo Antenna
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Ham Radfo Store UK
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Fascinating to hear about the use of the 5m band back in the day.
Thoughts on putting one of these in the attic/loft?
I made a folded dipole for 6m turned it into a square folded dipole on a couple of fiberglass electric fence poles stuck through a pc of pvc pipe direct fed it with 50 ohm coax and got a 1:1 match fiddling with the ends to get a near perfect tune. spent$5 American to make it.
Thank you for an interesting video. This antenna looks useful. Unless I've misinterpreted your gamma match comments from 9:10 onwards I believe the bolt is there to accommodate movement of the longer element in/out of the 'trombone'. The main tuning of the match is by the beehive trimmer.
The main tuning can be carried out on either side
so, the gamma bolt is not really needed for frequency adjustment. There is no clue in the instructions.
With the exception of a handful of contacts on the local 6m FM repeater before it became defunct, I've never made a QSO on 6m. I've never even heard a station, though during a recent opening, I sent CQ on the FT8 frequency for a while and actually got a report (-24 or something of similar faintness) from a PSK reporter monitor station. I guess I'll call it a win!
In fairness, what I have now is a vertical tuned for the FM portion of the band, and it isn't up all that high (maybe 7 meters or so). Maybe I'll rig up a dipole one of these days and see if that's better. Of course, I'm to the point where I'm wondering if I would inadvertently trigger apocalyptic events were I actually to successfully have a 6m (non FM repeater) QSO...
But I digress... Looks like an interesting antenna.
interesting that if you tickle the middle of the antenna it is a halo (or just a wound up half wave dipole), but if you tickle the same metalwork across the ends it is then a half wave loop (& just like if you tickle the end of a half wave dipole it is called an EFHW with a very high i/p impedance the half wave loop is also super high Z.... but nothing that a quarter wave section of 450 ohm budgie ladder as a matching stub cannot bring down to a manageable impedance that a "normal" ATU cannot cope with).
Peter - I have had this halo for some time and bought originally from MR for exactly the same purpose as you outline - and annoyingly my results don't quite match yours. I found it straightforward to physically assemble. However, despite working with the gamma match, trombone adjustment and numerous tweaking of the beehive trimmer actually getting a reasonable match on 6m with a RigExpert VNA has proved to be almost impossible. This is with attempting to tune it atop a 20ft fibreglass portable mast. The gamma match appears to be too short and the halo wouldn't come down to even 52Mhz. It just seems to be electrically too small. More detail here on your tuning process might be helpful? Hopefully the product documentation has been improved since my purchase. The halo has sat here in the radio room propped by a radiator (of the thermal kind) awaiting its fate. Clearly YMMV and the design may have been updated - it would be good to save it from the hacksaw!
I think mine must be different to yours as I could tune it above and below the band, just by telescoping the side elements.
Have just looked at the price and I have to say you would be hard pressed to build one for the price of this antenna.