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Kenwood TS-2000 owners please chime in...

Turbo T

Turbo T

Certified CB Rambo
Feb 2, 2011
963
142
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I picked one of these up last weekend. This is my first HF rig, outside of a 10 meter mobile.

I have a home brew 70 CM vertical and a Ringo Ranger II 2 M vertical hooked to it. Now I am ready to find or build an antenna to work the 6 meter and HF bands.

However, I am not sure, since this rig covers 6 M thru 160 M, if I should go for an antenna that resonates in the middle of all the bands, or if I should have several antennas for each band.

I know it has a built in antenna tuner.....if I were to buy or build a 20 M antenna, would the tuner be able to tune it in even if i wanted to use the 80 M band or even the 160 M band?

Not sure where to go. Please help.

Thanks in advance.
 
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First of all, if you make a dipole that includes 160m - it will need a lot of space and be very long. This is impractical for many.

A 10-40m standard dipole, a fan dipole, or even an off-center fed dipole will still be about 67 ft long and need to be at least 1/2 as high off the ground as it is long to be reasonable efficient.

A 40m loop antenna is a really fine option too.
Might well be my next antenna.

Don't think that the tuner in the Kenwood will work beyond a 3:1 match. An external tuner may be needed - depending on the antenna you get or build.

The TS-2000 is a really fine radio. Sure like mine a bunch. Might not be the best thing out there; but for the money it does provide a whole lot. Think you made a fine choice. There is a Yahoo user group for this radio if you need to get down to the nitty-gritty questions.
 
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This is what you need

Alpha Delta DXLB PLUS http://www.alphadeltacom.com/dxlb_ii.htm

Make sure you get the PLUS model

I had the G5RV and I thought it was a decent antenna, until I started using the Alpha Delta.

WHAT A DIFFERENCE! If you have room for a G5RV you have room for the Alpha Delta

You can hook that up to antenna port 1

As for 6 meter, you could always make a homebrew antenna for 6 meter, I made a 6 meter loop and then buy a 10 meter vertical, like the ANT99 or IMAX 2000 and mount the loop under the vertical and run two pieces of coax to an antenna switch in the shack and from the switch into antenna port 2

You will find that you don't use 6 meter that often.

I do not care what anyone says, I had the G5RV up at the same time as the Alpha Delta and I could hear DX stations on the Alpha Delta and nothing on the G5RV. I run QRP now (5 watts) and people cannot believe I am only using the Alpha Delta, I more than tripled my contacts when I got rid of that G5RV

Shop around for a good price on the Alpha Delta
 
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Thanks, I will look into both dipoles, especially the alpha delta one.

I do see Chameleon makes an antenna that seems to doe everything plus 2 M and 70 CM...V1 KIT...Chameleon V1 KIT Antenna though it's only 8.5 ft tall I can only wonder how well it actually performs.
 
I have the DXCC Alpha Delta which is the little sister to the DXLB+. It was night and day for me over a G5RV dipole that I was running. Especially when I flipped the switch for my SB200.
 
All multiband antennas are compromises, just depends on what/which bands you don't mind having a not really good antenna on. Or, how much room you have to put up an antenna.
One simple way of thinking about it is to use an antenna for the lowest band of interest and 'make' it work on bands that are higher. It's easier to make a too long antenna work than a too short antenna.
It's going to boil down to how much room you have to put up an antenna, and how much you are willing to spend to do so.
Dipoles are about the simplest/cheapest antennas you can make. They don't absolutely have to be 'perfect', you can 'fudge' quite a bit and they will 'work'. They can be 'bent' into some really odd shapes and be usable.
You've got lots of choices and lots of sources for information, use them. Try something, see if it works. If not, try something else...
- 'Doc
 
A horizontal LOOP wire antenna may be your best choice for 80 ~ 6 for an All-Band-In-One inexpensive wire antenna. Tons of info on the web about Loops and they have been around forever. One for 160 also will be excessively long even in a typical Square configuration but if you have the space it would awesome. An 80M Loop in a Square will be approx. 75 feet on each side. Loops have gain as you increase in freq. above 80 and are quiet against noise seeing as they are a Current Point type rather than a Voltage Point type like a dipole. If you center the resonance of the Loop in the middle of 80M (or 160), then it will also have resonance points in ever band above there, or very close, up to 6 meters. You may still yet need a good outboard tuner to use any all-in-one antenna to get full use coverage in every band. Built-in tuners in HF rigs typically can correct only a 2:1 SWR max and may not tune any old antenna anywhere you want to go.

Good luck
 
I do appreciate the responses.

I am beginning to wonder though if a vertical antenna would be a better bet?

That alpha delta looks like it needs quite a bit of room long ways to be stretched out.

So what about verticals? I'm thinking maybe a 5-BTV by Hustler or maybe a 6-BTV. I see the 5-BTV has a 4.6/5 rating on eham....I don't know about the 6-BTV other than it covers the 30 meter band. Of course it doesn't appear either is any good for 160 meters.

Also does either antenna require an external tuner or will the internal tuner suffice?

Thanks again.
 
The Alpha Delta takes just as much room as a G5RV.

As for the BTV series.

No need for the 6 if you don't do CW (30 meter)

As long as it is installed properly, you don't need a tuner to operate on the 5 bands the antenna is intended for. If you go to the band edges, the radio internal tuner will clean it up for you.

They sell a 60 meter and 17 meter addon to the 5BTV.

Answer this though,

How much room do you have to install the vertical?

You will need radials laid out in the ground

I had a friend who insisted on buying the 5BTV and said he had the room for it. I told him it would be to close to his house and it would affect the SWR.

He couldn't get the SWR adjusted because of the reflection.

He ended up selling it and put up a dipole.

Check out these install ideas

http://static.dxengineering.com/global/images/instructions/dxe-btv-install-guide-rev0e.pdf

Turbo T said:
I do appreciate the responses.

I am beginning to wonder though if a vertical antenna would be a better bet?

That alpha delta looks like it needs quite a bit of room long ways to be stretched out.

So what about verticals? I'm thinking maybe a 5-BTV by Hustler or maybe a 6-BTV. I see the 5-BTV has a 4.6/5 rating on eham....I don't know about the 6-BTV other than it covers the 30 meter band. Of course it doesn't appear either is any good for 160 meters.

Also does either antenna require an external tuner or will the internal tuner suffice?

Thanks again.
Click to expand...
 
Happy_Hamer said:
Answer this though,

How much room do you have to install the vertical?

You will need radials laid out in the ground
Click to expand...

Thanks for the link. As of right now, I have a 6 ft metal fence post cemented in the ground. This pole is 1 foot away from the side of my garage. The ground around it is a mix of some gravel, grass and there is an a/c unit as well.

The idea was to use this existing pipe in the ground for an antenna; currently it serves as the post for my Ringo Ranger II 2 meter. I am thinking of taking the 2 M down for now.

I was not aware that this style antenna had wires on the very bottom that layed on the ground. My back yard isn't all that big....maybe 60' by 25'.

The only other antenna that looked attractive was an LDG S9v31 but it only covers up to 40 meters.
 
Turbo-T I wouldn't worry as much about 160 and 80 meters if you are just getting your feet wet on the HF bands. Both of those tend to be more winter bands as they suffer a lot more from atmospheric conditions. It seems like I've noticed that 160 is more CW. Then 80 tends to be more of guys rag chewing with their friends. So not so much a DX band.

With the antenna sizes (length) for 160 and 80 and potentially less usage I would focus more on 10 through 40 meters. If nothing else make a 20 & 40 meter fan dipole from a roll of wire from a hardware store. Connect it to a basic balun and you are good to go. Also a 40 meter dipole will often tune up ok for 15 meters.

I have a Hustler 6BTV vertical ground mounted on a piece of pipe that sticks about 18 inches from the ground. For radials I have about thirty ranging from 10 foot to a few about 40 feet long. That was all of the space that I had to use. If ground mounted radial length doesn't matter. By ground mounted the base of the vertical is almost at ground level. If the base is elevated by a few feet then the radials don't work the same.

If you mount the vertical up in the air then you really well need at least a couple of radials cut to length for each band.

For Hustler verticals check out the DX Engineering website. Also can download some PDF's of tuning and installation instructions.

My impression is that 6 meters is at its best generally from May through July. So I wouldn't worry about an antenna for that until next spring.
Also in my opinion the short verticals that are supposed to cover all bands and say no radials needed are junk and not worth the cost.

Have fun.
 
Very few people have antennas at 'ideal' heights. You get as much height as you can and then live with it. A dipole ought to be as high as it is long, but you can see how limiting that can be for most people. That's not the 'ideal' height (whatever that is), just a 'good' one. If it's high enough not to 'clothesline' yourself, it'll work... mostly.
- 'Doc
 

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