Monday, June 13, 2011

Preparations to put up the Diamond KV-5, a 5 band antenna - PART 3

The fun installation turned out be a complete nightmare.....

The KV-5 was set up at ground level... and it worked really REALLY well.... The SWR was absolutely perfect.  So it was time to put the KV-5 on top of my mast in the back yard.

There it is :)
I was so happy..... But that changed rapidly....
I hooked up the antenna to my ts-480 and tried to tune it.... but.... NO band would tune....
The 5 bands were perfectly set up , but now high above the ground it was totally messed up!

Not having a clue what i did wrong, i wrote an email to Diamond in Japan....
And their answer was pretty clear... "KV5 is required to install at the ground."

I wrote a reply stating my frustration that the manual is not clear at all on the location to install the antenna. There is no note at all that you can not install this antenna on a mast. nor is there a note that you can only install this antenna at ground level.

I called my supplier and he and I came to an agreement that he would take back the KV-5 and supply me with a Falcon OUT-250B , a many band 7,16m long GPA. (google for exact specs....)

So now we have........


I have not had the time to test it really well.... but it tunes on all bands, and it receives more then my weird wire antenna.....
In the upcoming weeks i will see how it works and compares to other antenna's......

73's

2 comments:

  1. "Not having a clue what i did wrong, i wrote an email to Diamond in Japan....
    And their answer was pretty clear... "KV5 is required to install at the ground."

    What is wrong with installing a antenna on ground level?
    On what ground level did you checked the antenna?
    I have a 10 meter antenna on ground level, just 1,50 mtr above ground.

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  2. There is nothing wrong with putting it at groud level.... It actually works verry well on the ground.
    IMHO 1,50 mtr is not ground level , and i have a hunch that the antenna will not like to be this high... I would keep it at 50cm max and then you will have an awesomm antenna.

    As i have a YL , i have to place my antenna's carefully....
    In the middle of the back yard, my YL would cause 24/7 QRM. :)

    Thanx for reading my BLOG, i hope you enjoy it!

    73's, Alex de PA1SBM

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