I finally got the whole install on the roof and finished this last weekend. For reference, my QTH is on an 800 foot hill over looking most of the city below. As a result, I don't have to get a VHF antenna very high off of the roof to have tremendous results.
I had to move my 2m Diamond F22A dual cophased 7/8 wave vertical to another vent pipe mount to make room for the Gizmotchy. Here is a shot of the finished result:
The two antennas are not as close as they appear in that picture, although they are closer than is ideal. Here is another shot where you can see that the vertical's ground radials are actually installed higher than the Gizmotchy:
The reflector of the Gizmotchy is about 3' from the nearest vertical radiator when the Gizmotchy is pointed at it. It's not ideal, but the two antennas don't seem to care all that much...it is about 1/2 wave away, after all.
As you can see, the Gizmotchy 2 meter isn't really any bigger than a large TV antenna. It certainly doesn't weigh anymore than one, either.
For the rotator, I purchased an Ameritron AR-35 light weight unit. This is similar to the many others that have the same form factor. I didn't want to run three coax runs for the vertical antenna and the two Gizmotchy feed points, so I also purchased the Ameritron RCS-8V 5 port coax switch. This lets me change between all 3 "antennas" with only one home run feed line and a small control box. Here is a pic of the rotator and coax switch:
I've been doing some testing, comparing the beam to the vertical, as well as testing the dual polarization characteristics of the Gizmotchy. I'll report back as soon as I have some better numbers. Initial tests show that switching between vertical and horizontal polarization on this antenna produces very interesting results.
More to come...
