Changes on the way

Status
Not open for further replies.

KD8NIV

Member
Joined
Mar 5, 2014
Messages
134
Location
West Virginia
As some of you no I have power lines running through the back yard, and out front as well but against the mountain side....no tree's in the yard I can use, and on a small lot as well.....anyways, I have a G5 up which is a 102' long , and is up 32' and its in a Vee shape over the top of my trailer, and have the legs coming out in a angle on both sides as far as I can go, have been able to use it on 20m and 12m bands.........and that's as far as I can go out with the legs....

So, not sure if I should cut the G5 down and use it as a Jr size dipole, or not...I do have the room to hang a Jr out flat and not be a problem.....

Also, going to buy a MFJ 939Y tuner, since it will work on a lot of different radios, and for the price.....not planning on running a amp here anytime soon, so think this is all I need for now....

Also, going to change out some coax I'm using too..

Also have a Imax 2k which has good swr on 10, 12, 15m bands, which haven't used it much..
Also have a homebrew 40m wire up 20' which seems to do a good job as well...

Should I cut the G5 down to a Jr size dipole, or what you guys suggest ?..
 

K7MEM

Member
Joined
Dec 16, 2013
Messages
422
Location
Swartz Creek, Michigan
At first I didn't understand what a "G5" was. But I finally figured it out. I never heard of a G5RV called just a G5 before.

But back to the question. Why do you want to cut the G5RV down to a Jr? What would be the main goal? Does it work on all the bands it is suppose to?

There is nothing wrong with running a G5RV as a Inverted-V. It may be a little less directional and be more omni-directional. But that's about it. The G5RV is really a 20 meter antenna that seems to perform fairly well on several other bands due to it's matching section. When you use it on something other than 20 meters, the radiation pattern is all over the place. I don't know that you will ever be able to tell the difference. The G5RV will probably work better than your 40 meter dipole because it has more height.

I have several antennas, but one that works very well is a combination Trap/Fan Dipole with the center at 35 feet. One fan handles 80, 40, and 15 meters and the other handles 20, and 10. It doesn't really need a tuner on any of those bands, but I like to move around a little bit, so I use one. The ends do slope down a bit, to reach the end posts. I live in the High Desert, so there is no such thing as a tall tree. But the 20, 15, and 10 meter sections work great. The first time I tried the 15 meter section, I had three European contacts inside 30 minutes.

So just use it like it is an enjoy it. The tuner your planning on getting should make it look good on all bands.

Martin - K7MEM
 

KD8NIV

Member
Joined
Mar 5, 2014
Messages
134
Location
West Virginia
The g5rv, I don't have the room to straighten out the legs, only way to straighten them out is if I went under all the power lines on the mountain side here and put it in those pine trees there, and then I'd have to run the coax on the ground and go under the lines to the shack, no way around this...

Reason thought about cutting the g5rv down is because I don't have the room for it....but it talks really well on 12m and 20m bands....but I'm going to order me a LDG AT-100 Pro-2 this week, and see how it does with the g5rv before I do anything to it.......can't go with a Vee shape because of the room, lot of metal present at this location, tried to do that with the home brew 40m wire and didn't work, couldn't get the swr low enough, so ended up moving the one leg out 18ft to tie it off to a tree, to get the swr tuned, now it's a 1.1...

Not sure what I'll end up doing with my antenna system...
 

KD8NIV

Member
Joined
Mar 5, 2014
Messages
134
Location
West Virginia
Think I'm going to buy a LDG 100 Pro2 auto tuner for my 450d, been doing research on this for a few days and from what I have read you can go inside the 450d's menu and change the settings in the tuner part of the radio.....there are other tuners that will work on this radio, but I like the features this one offers, and don't plan on running a amp here anytime soon....

The G5RV, I found away to stretch the legs out, at least 96' of it...it will be in a straight line, and around 30' all the way across the yard...and from where the center connection will be I'll be using about 50' of coax on it....so, this is what I'm going to start with..
 

KD8NIV

Member
Joined
Mar 5, 2014
Messages
134
Location
West Virginia
Placed my order for a LDG AT-100 Pro 2 auto tuner yesterday, and some Dacron rope too.....
Going to take the Imax 2k, and 40m wire down this weekend and get them out of the way, and stretch out the legs on the g5rv, and see what happens from there, should be interesting with all the metal I have here..
 

TheSpaceMann

Member
Joined
Apr 3, 2014
Messages
1,333
Placed my order for a LDG AT-100 Pro 2 auto tuner yesterday, and some Dacron rope too.....
Going to take the Imax 2k, and 40m wire down this weekend and get them out of the way, and stretch out the legs on the g5rv, and see what happens from there, should be interesting with all the metal I have here..
Some hams were saying that they extended the lengths of their Imax 2000's and A99's to get lower band coverage.
 

KD8NIV

Member
Joined
Mar 5, 2014
Messages
134
Location
West Virginia
I bought my Imax 2k new about 5 years ago now, and I fine tuned the swr well which then was for 11m use.....since then I have used it on 10m and the swr there was running less than a 1.5.....

So now, I have been using it for 10, 12, and 15m bands, and haven't touched tuning it since I bought it new....I never added any length to mine....

But I took it down today, took the 40m wire down too, making room to stretch out the G5RV tomorrow, and hang it.....trying to get it moved before my tuner gets here Monday...
 

KD8NIV

Member
Joined
Mar 5, 2014
Messages
134
Location
West Virginia
Took the Imax 2k, and the 40m wire down the other day, and noticed a crack in the 2nd section on the antenna, will fix this later on.....but had to take them down to get them out of the way...

Moved the G5RV, one end its 32' off the ground, and the other end 23-25' off the ground, it is hanging in a straight line, thing I ran into is the ladder line was on the ground about 10' of it or so, going to tie it up to my back porch for now using some Dacron rope and see how it does....I'll get it setup like I want it then see how it does....right now my swr looks like hasn't changed much, no more about it in a few days....well, this is what have done the last couple days anyways...
 

KD8NIV

Member
Joined
Mar 5, 2014
Messages
134
Location
West Virginia
Update.....

Got the G5RV all moved, and the ladder line is off the ground......the ladder line, comes straight down from the dipole, and has a swag in it, and comes up under the roof of my back porch, used a piece of foam that's used to wrap your water lines with to protect the ladder line, as it comes up to the top of the post on the corner of the porch, and runs a long a 2X4 at the top, over to a center post on the porch, tied it off there, and the Balun hangs down, and the coax choke, it hooks up there, and it too is tied off on the post, and the coax runs to the ground, and back out to the shack...

Swr was good on 12 and 20m bands just with the tuner inside the radio.....I did receive my LDG AT-Pro2 auto tuner later in the day, and hooked it up to my Ft 450D radio, yep people told me it wouldn't work with my radio, but yes it does work with this radio, and will tune my G5RV on 10-80m bands, without any problems...

This tuner, is easy to hook up, and will indeed work with a 450D, no problems...nice little tuner, I went with this one because I like the idea it having 2 antenna ports on the back, and having a swr and 125 watt meter in it, small enough to set on top of my 450d, so far it has tuned the bands I want to use......will let you no how it does down through the months....
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top