Roger,
Just to share experience, in spite none with the M2 egg beaters.
1) 3B8FA and myself did many QSO with simple antenna such as egg beaters on many birds or other type of omni circular polarization antenna. We started with these and then moved to directional antennas which surely have many advantages but I suggest that you start with home brew antenna instead of buying expensive omni one as same may be build at home for a few $ with material available in any hardware store, more plenty of designs available on the net. 2) Contacts have been made with even verticals both sides here. 2) On VHF RX preamplifiers are not really needed (even with omni’s) for many birds, such as AO-91, AO-92, XW-2x series, CAS 4B. TX, 30W is more than enough for the birds mentioned in spite of you long coax. I had 30m RG213 with omni's which worked ok for many birds. 3) On UHF RX, you will probably need a preamp as your feeder quite long, but it may work out with FO-29 which is generally quite strong.
In a nutshell, don’t invest much money for omni antenna as after a while, if you get the virus, you will surely want to move to directional ones, keep the $ for these as the setup is not cheap. Learn the basic with cheap home brew antennas first that decide of what you need for the next frontier and save you $ for same.
Hope it helps.
Jean Marc (3B8DU)
On Jul 19, 2018, at 2:41 PM, Roger Titmuss OLDBIKER@sky.com wrote:
Hi as a newcomer to this part of the hobby I have a couple of questions.
- When using the M2 egg beaters how important is it to install a masthead
preamplifier?
- Again with egg beater will 30 watts be enough to get back to the bird?
I am using about 80 feet of RG213 to connect the antenna.
Many thanks
Roger G0AWY
73
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