20 Meter Half Square - towertalk Forum at eHam.net

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20 Meter Half Square	Reply
by W0STB on October 11, 2009	Mail this to a friend!
Just a quick post to report on my new 20 meter half square antenna. I am fairly antenna restricted at my QTH but wanted to at least try something other than my 20' high dipole... I put up a 20 meter half square using two 21' fibreglass poles, oriented to favor NE/SW direction. It does indeed work better than the dipole for DX, there are times when signals are much better than the dipole as far as hearing the DX and not hearing some US stations. It's not quite as good as stacked 6 element beams but it was cheap, doesn't take much room, and is an improvement over the low dipole. It was well worth the little effort to get it put up. 73 - Mike W0STB

RE: 20 Meter Half Square	Reply
by WB5JEO on October 12, 2009	Mail this to a friend!
Nice when something works as it's supposed to. That family of antennas ought to be explored more by folks hoping for DX out of their dipoles that are most often simply not mounted high enough to do the job for them. The half square is the easiest of them and is tolerant of restricted space requirements to alter the geometry of the vertical elements or asymetry required by a sloping site and isn't too much degraded by a lack of artificial ground. How did you feed yours?

RE: 20 Meter Half Square	Reply
by W0STB on October 12, 2009	Mail this to a friend!
I current-feed it in an upper corner with coax. I made an 8-loop 6" diameter balun at the feedpoint, and am bringing the coax away from the feedpoint at 45 degrees. Another unexpected advantage I have experienced with this antenna is it is quiet. The noise level at most time is down between 1 and 3db compared to my dipole.

RE: 20 Meter Half Square	Reply
by W6OP on October 16, 2009	Mail this to a friend!
I made a series of half squares for 20m through 10 meters mounted on 3 foot tripods. That way I could change bands when needed and rotate them. They worked pretty good. Pete W6OP

RE: 20 Meter Half Square	Reply
by W0STB on October 17, 2009	Mail this to a friend!
Did you notice much difference moving them? I pounded in a second post so I can move one end - rotating it about 90 degrees from where I currently have it. But I haven't tried it yet - to tell the truth the stations which shouldn't be as loud based on direction - South America for instance - come in just as loud as the favored direction of Europe. Of course 3 db is going to be pretty hard to hear I think.

RE: 20 Meter Half Square	Reply
by N3OX on October 18, 2009	Mail this to a friend!
The front-to-side ratio for a working half square is much more than 3dB. Should be 10-20dB depending on your dirt. Remember, gain in one direction comes at the expense of gain in another. Of course it would be easy for SA to be 10dB+ stronger with respect to EU on average just due to propagation, so equal signal levels don't have to mean it's not worth turning your antenna, just that it might not be necessary given the propagation conditions. But if you see a DX spot for a weak VP8 or something it might be worth swinging it around. And of course the opposite direction from South America for me is weak Asian stations, so it's almost certainly worth having a rotatable antenna here vs. one fixed on Europe. I might not have to turn it to work a LU7 but I sure do to work an XU7 73 Dan

RE: 20 Meter Half Square	Reply
by W6OP on October 18, 2009	Mail this to a friend!
My experience was pretty much as N3OX described. The nice thing I had was telescoping tubing for the uprights so I just changed the height and clipped on a different length cross wire at the top to change bands. Pete W6OP

RE: 20 Meter Half Square	Reply
by WD4ELG on October 18, 2009	Mail this to a friend!
Try this to get some better performance than the half-square. Only needs 32 more feet of horizontal space... http://wd4elg.blogspot.com/2009/09/sounds-of-dx.html

RE: 20 Meter Half Square	Reply
by KJ4IGV on October 20, 2009	Mail this to a friend!
Thanks for the report on the half square. I'm thinking about putting one up for 40m, primarily because of the height issue. WB5JEO mentions sloping ground. Anybody have experience with this? I'm interested in thoughts as to whether it would be preferable for the horizontal segment to follow the horizon, or the terrain. 73, Dan

RE: 20 Meter Half Square	Reply
by W0STB on October 20, 2009	Mail this to a friend!
One of the antenna books I read said that it was very important that the vertical elements be at the exact same elevation - then the top phasing wire will be perfectly horizontal. My yard slopes and so I have a longer pole on the downhill side to make it all even. I am sure happy with this antenna, for the little cost and little hassle factor of putting it up it has been a real pleasure. I think maybe I'll try my other post position this weekend during the DX contest - see what "rotating" it brings about.

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