"Chuck W." wrote in message
oups.com...
I've got an 80 meter horizontal loop up around 50 feet in my backyard,
fed with ladder line. It seems to work really well on 20 and 18
meters, no doubt has some decent gain over a dipole in some lobes. I
push about 500 watts into it and work all kinds of DX with very good
reports, even breaking pileups on 20 meters.

Would a 3 element yagi open up a new experience of antenna performance
for me, in terms of forward gain? Sure seems convenient to have an
antenna that doesn't require a tower and a rotator.

Thanks,

Chuck

Hi Chuck,

I have roughly 300 feet of 14 gauge insulated wire in a square horizontal
loop at 28 feet above the yard here and use 4 foot sections of fiberglass
camo netting supports at each corner guyed with para-cord . Work mainly MARS
stations in the CONUS on 3 to 8 MHz frequencies using 100 watt Icom
transceiver and AH-4 auto-tuner with ladder line feed. This antenna works
very well in this application and I'm consistently reported as 'loudest
station on the net', etc.

I've had lots of great DX contacts too. When you look at AZ-EL plots it has
very sharp lobes at certain frequencies. Probably much better for DX at 50
feet. Delta loop is more omnidirectional and doesn't have as many sharp
lobes.

Adding a tower, rotor and yagi would definitely open up much more DX. Have
a 55 foot crank-up tower, rotor and 12 element log periodic project planned
for this fall. For me, it's worth the effort. Should be much easier to
contact friends that are currently in the Middle East.

73,
Mike ae6fl, AAM9ECS