Hex Beam Shoot Out With The Mosley Tribander TA33M

[De_Wildfire]

Wow, last night on 17 meters, a local here not too far from me contacted Japan the same time on 17 meters at dusk. He was a running a Mosley Tribander TA33M with same power. The Japan station said we were both S-9. The Hex Beam is sitting around 30 feet on a pole and his Mosley Tribander TA33M is sitting on a tower at 50 feet. I'm not knocking the Mosley Tribander TA33M but this little Hex beam can pack a good punch and stay hidden in the back yard.

[Lost Ram]

Stealth!!!!

[De_Wildfire]

Lost Ram,

There's three stealth antennas hidden in the back yard. The Hex Beam, the 40/80 meter dipole and the iMAX2000 on a pole sticking out of the top of a trees to blend in with all the branches. When the trees grow, I go out there and water the antenna at the base and somehow that grows too.

[Lost Ram]

I love the Imax. When I move to Louisiana in 2005 I put my Imax in pine tree next to the metal out building. At that time it was connected to two 10 foot mast pipes and strapped to the top of the tree truck to get the ground plane up out of the top of the tree limbs. Went up a couple times to raise the mast up but then just let it go. The tree top started to grow into the ground plane but it never seemed to affect it so I didnt worry about it. It was maybe a 10-ish years later that a bad storm with high winds snapped the fiber glass antenna. A couple weeks later I ordered another and more LMR400. The first test I did was to put it up about 20 feet, this did not perform at all like it did 70+ feet in pine tree so I had to put it back up in the tree. Just a few years later the same type of storm broke it again and I didnt replace it as we had bought land in Texas that we were working on clearing on the weekend. So now my Imax is only 26 feet to the base but it works just fine for what it is here at our TX property. I will say the difference between 70'+ and 26' is a big difference.

[De_Wildfire]

I still get great results with the iMAX 2000. With the sub receiver on along with the head set listening to the hex and the iMAX at the same time, there is a see-saw effect. The propagation is always changing and sometimes the iMAX hears better and vise-versa. It sounds cool to hear the signals bounce through my head.