10 to 13 element beam

[1iwilly]

so i see some guys are building and running 10 12 13 element beams and putting 10,000 to 30,000 watts behind it
1st off if you are putting that many watts behind a beam then the beam is not working. i personally believe anything over 6 or 7 elements is a waist of time and no prove or evidence it works.

 

[w9cll]

An ego trip is all it is.

 

[BC Coyote]

An ego trip is all it is.

An ego trip coupled with some very suspect math. These people don't seem to understand how gain works with yagi's. You get a big increase in gain going from 2 elements to 3, and another slightly smaller increase going from 3 elements to 4. Adding more director elements after that only gives you a tiny bit more gain for each one. And the more elements you add the less gain is realized for each additional element. Furthermore, an 11 element yagi is only a wee bit more directional than a 3 element !
These YouTube antenna experts just add 2 or 3dB of gain for each element they add and end up with ridiculous claims for ERP.

I'll just add that this whole "Mr.Bigshot Worldwide" thing is a bit silly. You could be blasting 100,000 watts from an 11 element beam, but if there's no conditions you'll barely be readable at 100 miles, let alone worldwide.
And if there are conditions you can be heard worldwide with just a hundred watts and a 3 element beam. You don't need an 11 element beam and 100 KW.

 

[AudioShockwav]

Out of high school I had a good friend, Jim Brewer, his handle was Double Barrel.
He bought a flat 8 element Yagi with a wire back door on a 40 foot boom.
It was a real monster, had a stub mounted above the boom with support wires to hold the ends of the boom level.
It took several of us and a crew from General Crane service to get it on the tower.
Old Green Hornet had a set of horizontal stacked 3's and the guy's down in Fresno all said the stacked 3's out talked the 8 element.
That big long boom destroyed 2 rotors before Jim gave up on it.
Last I seen that antenna his wife was using the back door to dry clothes on.......
The stack 3's stayed up for years untill old hornet passed and his family sold the house.


The best working set-up I have ever personally seen was two lighting 4 quads stacked on a 100 foot tower owned by Steve, Farm Boy west of Madera CA.
He worked as a broadcast engineer and had the connections to put them up right.
Ran a old Golden Eagle radio and a homebrew 3-500z amp.
He could hear a gnat fart on a screen door 100 miles away with that setup.
When DX started to fade for everyone else he worked stations long into the night with those quads that we could not hear....

73
Jeff

 

[lonestarbandit]

Jeeze I snapped my rotor on a VQ3 with a storm. That was I think a 13ft boom? I can't even imagine the loading and stresses and work and money required for such a beam. Madness, utter madness.

 

[BC Coyote]

Great story Shockwav. Stacked beams will indeed outperform a longer single beam in most cases. In fact stacked antennas, even stacked vertical single elements, work very well indeed and make it possible to increase antenna gain while remaining omnidirectional.
It's the reason they are standard for VHF land mobile and nearly all FM broadcast applications. Most FM broadcast stations use stacked circularly polarized antenna elements, commonly known as bays. If you look up at the top of an FM broadcast tower you will see between 2 and 16 pretzel shaped antenna elements aligned vertically on the tower 1 or 1/2 wavelength apart and fed with phasing cables.
The more elements, the greater the Effective Radiated Power, and the stronger the signal towards the horizon.

I remember years ago seeing a homebrew stacked omnidirectional 11 meter antenna made with four 108 inch whips formed into two vertical dipoles and mounted vertically on a tower 25 feet up and 9 feet apart from tip to tip. The thing worked at least as well as a 5/8 groundplane !

 

[AudioShockwav]

We used a couple phased 4 bay dipole arrays up by Yosemite on a two meter repeater and faced them 90° apart on the side of the tower.
This allowed us to work a much larger area down in the valley than the omni we were using before.

73
Jeff

 

[w9cll]

While not on 11 meters but I have run stacked Cushcraft 17B2 17 element beams at 80'. It was a pain in the ass to setup but it worked great. For those that don't know this was on 2 meter 144.200mhz.

 

[AudioShockwav]

I ran a couple 14 elements on 2 meters, I had a ton of fun with that set up.
Much more manageable on 2 meters and 440.

73
Jeff

 

[BJ radionut]

While not on 11 meters but I have run stacked Cushcraft 17B2 17 element beams at 80'. It was a pain in the ass to setup but it worked great. For those that don't know this was on 2 meter 144.200mhz.
View attachment 66328

17 "L's " on 31 Foot Boom I have NIB single in the barn now...maybe next spring!~!!

I have 12 "L" wide space (17 ft. Boom) Vertical/FM Simplex at 25ft to boom now...works FB.

 

[Shadetree Mechanic]

So now I am thinking that I could get another Sirio 4 element and stack them. But then why stop at two? How about a stack of 3 or 4?

Some interesting reading:

Stacking HF Yagis - The Basics

Stacking of two identical yagis can provide an additional 3 db gain (doubling). That is, under suitable conditions. There is lot of fantasti...

ve3vn.blogspot.com

 

[BJ radionut]

https://www.n5dux.com/ham/files/pdf/Build%20the%20Featherweight%206m%20Yagi.pdf

Antenna Performance : co-phasing - IW5EDI Simone - Ham-Radio

Co-Phasing Co-phasing or “stacking” has long been a way to get high gain from antennas. Co-phasing involves placing two (or more!) identical antennas either side-by-side or one over top another (“stacking”) at a certain distance apart (usually a 1/2 Wavelength or more) and feeding the antennas...

www.iw5edi.com

 

[AudioShockwav]

even stacked vertical single elements, work very well indeed and make it possible to increase antenna gain while remaining omnidirectional.

I am getting old.......
I think it was Toll Free that had 4 vertical antennas set up as a phased array above the Santa Cruz mountains.
He used to get his name called often working DX on the bowl.
I think he took the same setup when he moved down south.
I used to talk to him from my mobile on Guadalupe grade down to Tehachapi CA.
That's about 200 air miles point to point.
Yes, they work.

73
Jeff

 

[Blackcat630]

I run 45 elements. . ...on 1296 mhz

 

[W4KVW]

While not on 11 meters but I have run stacked Cushcraft 17B2 17 element beams at 80'. It was a pain in the ass to setup but it worked great. For those that don't know this was on 2 meter 144.200mhz.
View attachment 66328

I had a 17B2 up for about 6 months & those support pieces both broke because the aluminum stock was so thin. It talked great until then & then it was taken down & somebody else owned it. I ran a TE Systems 5054 amplifier into it & I worked all over North America,Cuba,Puerto Rico & more with it.