Part 4 - 6 band hexabeam antenna construction

Final touches and assembly

This is where it all comes together. If you have done your shopping correctly, the antenna is ready for the final assembly. All you need now is a space of about 10 square meters with a post in the middle so you can install the spreaders and wires.

The painful construction part was assembling the wire sets. Each of these has 5 pieces (driver, tip space, reflector, tip space , driver), and has to be measured very carefully. The HEXROPE kit mentioned in the shopping list (previous post) has enough wire for a 6 band antenna. To make the wire kits I purchased some 1/8 aluminum sleeves and used those to hold the rope ends and cable ends together. The tool to crimp these (75CAD) had to be also purchased since the 4mm aluminum sleeves will not bend easily.

I spent a good 2-3 hours of measuring and building the wire sets. On the living room floor, with a measuring tape, measuring every set twice before cutting the wire - it almost paid off. At the end when it all went up in the air and we measured it all bands except 6m and 12m were resonating where it should be, while the above too seem to be a bit too short and resonating higher than expected.

 Once you have the cable sets, the rest is a walk in the park. Literally. You need to walk around the antenna several circles to assemble all cable sets. See the time lapse video below:

As you can see there has to be enough space to assemble it as the antenna has a diameter of about 6 meters. After assembly we raised it a bit higher to about 2.5 meters from the ground and gave it a try. Even from this elevation I could hear certain station much better and what we did not expect - that I was able to make a contact with a Hungarian station on 20 meters right away. Even though we speak Hungarian and you won't understand it, you can hear the quality of the incoming signal pretty clearly:

The antenna at this point was not higher than 2.5m from the ground. The next few days we spent listening on different bands and when Mike (VA3MW) had a moment he came over the measure the antenna with an analyzer.

 

The below picture are from the readings taken 2.5m off the ground. Some SWR reading may seem to be alarming, rest assured when we lifted the antenna above the chimney all these went below 1.5. Some of the elements are resonating a bit off band, those will be dealt with later: