On Sunday when I was out, I finally had the opportunity to do some very basic testing with another Local amatuer whom is approx 20km away  to do some simple testing  of the 4 possible configurations of the Vertical antenna’s.

It was certainly not state of the art, but more real-world evaluation of the Received Signals, so more comparative than anything else.

My Ascii Art

A         B                                                                                                           RX

Ok,  A and B are the 2 Vertical Antenna’s spaced 1/4 wavelength  (5.1Metres)  apart and RX is the Remote station where we were receiving the signal o the various feed configurations.

First Test – a Single Vertical

I connected up to Vertical B and the Rx signal strength was S8, and the baseline we would use to compar all other configurations against.

Second Test – Broadside

Next test was to connect the feedpoint via a T piece to both A and B feedlines.  The expected pattern is a “figure 8” with the nulls towards the RX and the lobes “broadside” to the array.  RX signal was S7. Pretty much as expected it would be weaker than a single antenna.

Third Test – End-fire Away from the RX

To end fire Away from the RX the Feedline was connected to antenna B and a 90Degree phase/delay line was then inserted in between the feedpoint to Antenna A.    So we can say that antenna B is 0 deg, and Antenna A is fed with a 90 degree lag/delay in phase. This should be a cartiod pattern with a deep null towards the RX station and firing in the direction of Antenna A.  The RX sgnal of S6 indicated that this was indeed the case.

Fourth Test – End-fire Array towards the RX

This time, I simply reversed the delay line and had Antenna A as 0 degrees, and Antenna B as  90 degree lag/delay.  This effectively means that that the cartiod pattern is now pointing towards the RX station, with the null towards the A antenna.  The RX signal strenth was S8-9 (subjective – descrbed as a bit better than the  config 1)

The results are about what I would expect – with differences of 6-10db on the signal.

Finally, I did shoot a short video that shows the Antenna configuration as per the Fourth configuration,  Looking from Antenna A towards Antenna B is the direction I was intending to “beam” and in this case, with the very broad forward pattern.

Hope the Video gives a bit of an indication on how I set up the End-fired Phased Vertical Array

Going Portable with multi-elements rocks!