[amsat-bb] Re: Arrow antenna

[Alan]

Exactly right Jim.  I did everything except the loctite and had mine up for
over a year on a TV rotator.  I just screwed the elements together as tight
at I could with in reason.  Some of the FM birds will have unsatisfactory
passes from time to time as you can't adjust for polarity or give the beam a
little twist of the wrist.  So you will get some fading from time to time .
Sometime you might be deaf for half a pass.  But that experiment was enough
to get me hooked and upgrade to a cross polarized and switchable antennas on
AZ/EL rotators.

BTW, I bypassed the built-in duplexer and ran two feed lines when the handle
was removed  i.e removed the foam handle and duplexer and shrink wrapped the
BNC connectors.  We have -40C to +40C weather here and it survived okay.
The only way you know something odd happened to my arrow is the wear and
tear after a year on the elements in that the colored speckles on the top
side of the arrows faded to the pure aluminium.  It's now back to field day
and demo use with the foam handle reinstalled.

I even added a DIY elevation control rather than fixing it at about 30
degrees by using an remote controlled electric auto mirror assembly picked
up at a local surplus supply house for about $5 plus a bunch of PVC plumbing
stuff from Home Depot.  

http://picasaweb.google.com/ve4yz.alan/ArrowWithAZELRotator#

However, now that I have a couple of KLM's on a Yaesu G5400b with Landwehr
preamps...well, there is no comparison.  I think that sooner or later
everyone comes around to understanding the importance of good antennas and
feed line and installed the best you can afford.   I appreciate that budgets
and physical location sometime will prevent an optimal installation.   My
KLMs are shorted to they clean my roof, but, that is for another discussion.


 

-----Original Message-----
From: amsat-bb-bounces at amsat.org [mailto:amsat-bb-bounces at amsat.org] On
Behalf Of Jim Leder
Sent: November 18, 2008 4:54 PM
To: Amsat
Subject: [amsat-bb] Arrow antenna

 I am a user of an Arrow II handheld yagi. I am also very impressed with
it's performance. Has anyone attempted to weatherize it for permanent
outside tower use? Seems a little Loctite on the element threads and some
shrink wrap around the BNC connectors, pull the foam handle and mount it.
Anyone try this?

     Jim Bob Buckeye 
            AKA
  **** Jim Leder****
    K8CXM since 1961
 IBM retiree since 1999
  
There are 10 types of people in this world -- those who understand binary
and those who don't.

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