Question about ground plane on Eagle One vertical

[KF0AWL]

I bought a Eagle One vertical after reading good reviews on it and I plan on mounting it to a tripod on my roof (I emailed them and they said they did same thing for years so...)
So were my tripod is mounted it sits on a soldered copper sheet roof covering with steel roof around it.
My thinking is I should be able to tap the copper sheet for a ground plane shouldn't I?

 

[prcguy]

Is this the 31ft fiberglass pole with a wire inside? Do you have an auto tuner at the base? If so and if your roof has a large surface area of sheet metal it should work fantastic for DX on all bands but you will have a dead zone around 75mi out to maybe a couple hundred miles due to the lack of NVIS propagation from a vertical. I've run similar verticals with auto tuner and lots of ground radials with great results and I once put a Butternut HF-6V vertical in the middle of an old ATT satellite uplink facility with a 125ft X 125ft copper sheet roof. That worked really well.

I bought a Eagle One vertical after reading good reviews on it and I plan on mounting it to a tripod on my roof (I emailed them and they said they did same thing for years so...)
So were my tripod is mounted it sits on a soldered copper sheet roof covering with steel roof around it.
My thinking is I should be able to tap the copper sheet for a ground plane shouldn't I?

 

[KF0AWL]

Yes the extendable pole vertical.
Auto tuner but not directly at base, it will be a Z-100Plus like 5 ft away in the shack.
The copper sheet roof isn't huge... (its our front porch approximately one story down from and beside steel roof.
Do I need to ground the PL connection to the sheet or anything? 🤔
I will be grounding the whole thing to a ground rod next to the porch

 

[KF0AWL]

Hope this makes sense lol
Top shows how the tripod sits in the corner on the copper sheet. The other gives the roof lines of the steel roof compared to were the copper is basically at floor level from second story.
The siding is also steel if that matters

 

[KF0AWL]

Altho sitting here thinking, I wonder how it would work on the ground in the corner of the porch and house wall 🤔
The steel siding would reflect the wave only one direction correct?

 

[prcguy]

The tuner needs to feed that type of antenna directly, every inch of coax between the tuner and antenna will degrade performance. And you need a whip type tuner, an LDG is more of a line flattener for a 50 ohm feedline.

Yes the extendable pole vertical.
Auto tuner but not directly at base, it will be a Z-100Plus like 5 ft away in the shack.
The copper sheet roof isn't huge... (its our front porch approximately one story down from and beside steel roof.
Do I need to ground the PL connection to the sheet or anything? 🤔
I will be grounding the whole thing to a ground rod next to the porch

 

[KF0AWL]

The tuner needs to feed that type of antenna directly, every inch of coax between the tuner and antenna will degrade performance. And you need a whip type tuner, an LDG is more of a line flattener for a 50 ohm feedline.

Well that sucks!
Nothing I read said anything about all this!
Basically I bought a good antenna as long as I spend more money to make it good??? 😡

 

[popnokick]

Put it up on the roof as you originally describe here. If you need to add a tuner at the base of the antenna later you can. I doubt five feet of coax to your Z-100 Plus tuner is going to make much difference. Yes, you should connect the ground connection on the Eagle One to the copper / steel roof material.... and that should all be grounded as you describe. The ground connection is the RF counterpoise for the simple vertical antenna. I use exactly the same components (Eagle One and Z100) only mine is mounted to the ladder on my camper trailer. Mine works beautifully on 40 through 6 meters, with best SWR on 40, 15, and 6M. Due to the smaller size of my counterpoise (trailer frame) it will not tune on 80M (receives just fine though). Hoping to soon solve the 80M situation with a Palomar Engineers multi-tapped un-un balun at the base of the Eagle One. Once I have that I can post results here. Two other hams in our club have the Eagle One and we have found that 80M is tricky but doable if you have either a large counterpoise or transmatch / un-un at the base. ANOTHER TIP: The Eagle One has a tendency to need re-extending the telescoping segments after high winds or extreme changes in temp. Follow the suggestion in their manual to drill a small hole at each junction of the telescoping segments and insert a small j-hook made from #14 wire or similar. This will keep all the segments fully telescoped and not sliding back into each other. BOTTOM LINE: Put 'er up as you planned... it will work and as you have more funds / time you can decide if there are things you'd like to add / change.

 

[KF0AWL]

THANK YOU! I was a little upset thinking I bought a paper weight till I spend more money!
I'm planning to use gorilla tape at joints to keep the slipping down under control, I usually hang out on 20m 40m and would like to make some DX if possible.

 

[prcguy]

The Eagle One is not a complete antenna, its just 31ft of wire and you need to provide some kind of matching right at the wire. On 40m it may work ok with 5ft of coax to a tuner but not on 20m or some other bands. On 20m its right near 1/2 wavelength of wire and the impedance will be in the 2500-3000 ohm range. You can't connect that to any length of 50 ohm coax without severe degradation.

If you have an Icom radio stick an AH-4 tuner right at the base connected to the wire on the Eagle One. For any other brand of radio get an outdoor rated tuner with a HV output and not an SO-239 and connect that right to the Eagle One wire and the grounded side of the tuner right to your sheet metal ground plane on the roof. That will provide an excellent DX antenna but anything else will be a problem.

I've seen the severe degradation using coax between the tuner and antenna first hand on antennas like this and if you could see a before and after example on 20m you would understand.

THANK YOU! I was a little upset thinking I bought a paper weight till I spend more money!
I'm planning to use gorilla tape at joints to keep the slipping down under control, I usually hang out on 20m 40m and would like to make some DX if possible.

 

[AK9R]

Nothing I read said anything about all this!

Every time I've seen the Eagle One antenna guy at a hamfest, he's been feeding it with an Icom AH-4 mounted at the base of the antenna. There's a photo on his website of the antenna mounted to an RV with an AH-4 next to the antenna. He doesn't explicitly state that a remote antenna tuner mounted at the base of the antenna is the preferred method...which is unfortunate.

Aside from the Icom AH-4 (which is limited to 120 watts), MFJ has a line of remote-mount antenna tuners.

 

[prcguy]

Some companies that sell 25ft, 31ft and 43ft verticals supply a 4:1 balun for the feedpoint between the vertical element and ground to smooth out the extreme impedance changes over the HF bands. That usually turns the antenna into a dummy load and when I removed the 4:1 on my DX Engineering 43ft vertical and replaced that with an SGC auto tuner it became a completely different antenna that worked very well, unlike the 4:1 setup.

 

[KF0AWL]

Some companies that sell 25ft, 31ft and 43ft verticals supply a 4:1 balun for the feedpoint between the vertical element and ground to smooth out the extreme impedance changes over the HF bands. That usually turns the antenna into a dummy load and when I removed the 4:1 on my DX Engineering 43ft vertical and replaced that with an SGC auto tuner it became a completely different antenna that worked very well, unlike the 4:1 setup.

Huh??
I'm still learning here 🙂 i know what a 4 -1 balun is but other then that you kinda lost me lol

 

[popnokick]

There are two things that are "show stoppers" with any antenna -
1) Is it a hazard to people or property?
2) Does it not work at all (i.e. no RF in / out)?
If either of the above is true then the antenna cannot / should not be used. But those are the extremes, and somewhere in a very wide "middle ground", all antennas are a compromise. The Eagle One is no exception. Will it work at all on many HF bands without modification? YES. Can it be made to work much better by adding a $300 - $600 tuner at the base? YES ABSOLUTELY... no argument there. Without additional matching components the Eagle One does very well on 40M, 15M, and 6M. Will it work on other bands? Yes BUT very inefficiently (high SWR, power limiting, poor RF output)... and likely not at all for transmitting on 80M. It may behave as a "dummy load" with a very poor RF pattern (if any at all) on bands other than 40, 15, or 6M. (And someone will chime in here explaining they did WAS with a dummy load, I know.)
Does that mean you shouldn't put one up? No, unless your goal is to have it work unmodified on 80M, or as a super-efficient, perfectly matched antenna on bands OTHER THAN 40, 15, or 6M. Put it up, enjoy working HF, and improve it if you feel the need and have the $$ and time to do so.

 

[KF0AWL]

THANK YOU popnokick!
Thats all a guy like me is looking for, a straight up not technical this is what you have answer! I'm mostly on 40 and 20 pretty much and I'm still new to HF and not a genius so if it gets technical its over my head. Lol
I at least know what I'm looking at and what I have to work with now so going forward I know I won't fry my radio from hooking it up.
I'm all about improving but don't like buying something to find out I only got half of what I need AFTER.

 

[popnokick]

As prcguy noted, 20M is not one of the better bands for the Eagle One that lacks a tuner / matching device at the base. The SWR is incredibly high and that causes the RF output on most rigs to "fold back" or be reduced to protect the finals. I run FT8 on 20M with 30W and can work most any station better than a -15db. But I know I have a lot of reflected power and probably a compromised RF field pattern. Be wary of attempting to run full power on 20M, particularly with high duty cycle modes such as digital or AM.

 

[KF0AWL]

I have only dipped my toes into digital so far. One of those other things take priority (like a decent antenna) lol
I currently have a MyAntenna end fed up but its not a ideal setup as neither is my mfj 2012 off center. Its frustrating but ill keep on keeping on.

 

[popnokick]

I’ll take my off-center dipole or an end-fed half wave any day over my Eagle One. However, nothing beats the easy-up and portability of the Eagle One. Did I write the word “compromise” in an earlier post? Sometimes ya gotta use the right …. Not necessarily perfect…. tool for the job.

 

[KF0AWL]

I’ll take my off-center dipole or an end-fed half wave any day over my Eagle One. However, nothing beats the easy-up and portability of the Eagle One. Did I write the word “compromise” in an earlier post? Sometimes ya gotta use the right …. Not necessarily perfect…. tool for the job.

Trouble is i got no trees and a lot the size of a postage stamp with either a house in the way, a public sidewalk that the kids mess with everything thats not protected by guard dogs and barbed wire or electric power lines to contend with it frustrating as hell!
The end fed runs from top of my tower down to the corner of my garage across the back down the side across the front and two feet down the other side. I got it brand new and EXTREMELY cheap not realizing how damn long the thing was 😬
The off center I have strung like ten feet in the air down the property line between my steel siding house and the neighbor.
I even considered what would happen if I took the end fed and shortened it from 80m down to 40m or something but was advised against that to

 

[popnokick]

In your situation you may find the Eagle One is the best performer. Your OCFD may be affected by the metal siding on the house, and the EFHW sounds like it zig-zags in a less than optimal fashion. Hopefully you are able to feed it from the low end (not the top of the tower).