Google on Jerry's "Texas Potato Masher II". His changes to the original are worth the effort. I built one each and worked AO51 with them using 5 watts and an HT. Progressed to M2 beams and UHF preamp and retired the IIs for possible field day use. They are easy to make with PVC and #12 house wire. A length of 12/2 with ground or 12/3 will get you the wire if the junk box is empty.
73, Jim
Edward Cole wrote:
At 09:07 PM 3/6/2007, Edward Cole wrote:
Jonny,
My impression of Hamtronics equipment --snip
Sorry should have written Matt. Also Ramsey instead of Hamtronics, though they are about the same in performance.
Matt, try running your preamp at the antenna as the first step and see if you improve your reception. I would also move the antenna away from the other antenna.
Then if still not good enough reception try a 2m whip. If the whip works better then you know you have a problem with the eggbeater. Does the eggbeater have a ground plane under it? If so this would favor overhead reception vs. on the horizon. The eggbeater is circular polarized for over head directions; did you make it right-hand or left-hand circular polarization? The simple whip or small yagi actually work better since polarity on LEO sats seem to shift a lot.
For much better results you might tilt your eggbeater down to 20-degrees and mount a light TV rotator to swing it in azimuth. In this position you should have the ground-plane radials to make the antenna directional. I belive that is what Jerry, K5OE, ended up doing to maximize his use of this antenna. Using an Arrow antenna mounted this way has worked very nicely for many LEO operators.
73, Ed - KL7UW ====================================== BP40IQ 50-MHz - 10-GHz www.kl7uw.com 144-EME: FT-847, mgf-1801, 4x-xpol-20, 185w DUBUS Magazine USA Rep dubususa@hotmail.com ======================================
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