W8ZHO | EZO Antenna

I didn't take a "before" picture (darn). But this is the 64' tower after replacing the mast and rotator, and adding the 20', 2" boom. The 6-meter antenna is back, but 3' higher than it was before. Previously, that was the only antenna on this tower. The rotator came from a tower we took down for a guy in Whitehall. See the Video
The rotator still worked, after sitting motionless atop that guy's tower for 30+ years. But not the control box. Bob WB8OQT predicted it was a blown capacitor, that big blue one in this picture. Sure enough, he was right. We found a used replacement at Kam Electric.
The control box is identical to the one at the clubhouse, the one we use for our tri-band beam. This one came with its manual. That made matching the capacitor an easy job.
This coax came from Tom W8AMZ. After installing the PL-259 fittings, I checked the line by attaching the club's dummy load to one end and my analyzer to the other. I got a 1:1 SWR on all frequencies. Cool.
This is the 3-element, 5-band EZO Antenna, fresh from the manufacturer (me). Every part is precut and labeled. The tension members have their ends terminated to prevent fraying, are cut and tied, and have element supports already installed. As compared to a cubical quad antenna, this has more line and less fiberglass.
Everyone seems to have their favorite way to feed an antenna. I like the simple approach. I did it this way with the cubical quad at GVSU. W8GVU Quad I've tried separate feed lines and matching systems, but found the benefit did not justify the effort. I like to feed all elements with a single coax.
This is pretty quick, once you get the hang of it.
The elements attach as shown. Simple! The signal will find the element that resonates and will ignore the rest. I taped again, then sealed with Silicone.
Here you see two of the three elements installed for testing. The third element (director) is hanging at the bottom of the tower and will be installed later. In the rear is our 110' tower with 3-element, tri-band beam. First QSO was Chuck W8CCS to a VE6 station. Chuck switched between the antennas to compare performance. You can read his report here: Chuck's Report
I used the antenna for its first DX contact: KC4AAA, on 20-meter phone, just as the band was dying. I easily broke through a simplex pileup of SA and sourthern states stations, many using high power. The South Pole station gave us a 57 signal report.
I worked DX on all the bands. I felt fortunate to have sunspots and a 10-meter contest. There were plenty of signals to use to test the antenna. Gain and signal to noise ratio were as high as I had expected them to be, but the front-to-back ratio was not. It was only about 12 dB on every band, which is the same value that we measured on the tri-band beam on its three bands. For this reason, I decided to add tuning stubs on the reflector element.
Nobody has ever complained about low F/B on the club's beam. Likewise, nobody complained about low F/B on W8GVU's quad. Pre-tuned commercial antennas work well, but not as well as they would if they were tuned after installation. The F/B radio is very sensitive to small adjustments to the reflector length. Although the original lengths worked perfectly in town, they were not exactly right for this location, high on a sand dune. After tuning, the antenna presents more than a 36 dB null at the back on 20-meters. The null is almost that deep on the other bands.
I made several DX contacts, breaking simplex phone pileups to stations in Angola, Zimbabwe, and others. Z21BC said twice that he was "amazed" how we were able to get through his QRN and QRM so clearly (and easily) with only 100 W. We plan to leave only two elements in place for a couple weeks, to give the club members a chance to see for themselves how well a 2-element EZO performs. We'll update this page after the third element is in place and we have more to report. Listen for us on the air!