Eagle One 80 to 10 Vertical

[KJ4IZJ]

Has anyone have 1?Been looking at 1 for a fixed station,and how many radials and lenghts to use.Majority of bands used would be 80 to 12 meters,but i still want to be able to use to 10 meters.thanks any info on the pros and cons would be appreciated.thanks kj4izj

[N4BFD]

The Eagle one is basically a Jackite fiberglass pole, 31ft long with a wire running up the middle of it.

Due to the length it is a 1/4 wave on 40 meters, which would make it a great antenna there, 1/2 on 20 meters, 3/4 wave on 15m and I guess a full wave or so on 10. Anything above 17m and you basically have high angle radiation. That being said I've used my 40m vertical on 15m and it works just swell there, and so so on ten, and that is after tuning it through 100ft of LMR400.

The best way to go with a antenna such as the Eagle one if you're going to use it on more than one band would be to put a auto tuner right at the base to take care of the matching. I guess secondly the next best thing would be to run some very low loss coax and a 4:1 unun, not a balun (like they say to do on the makers site).

I have one of these Jackite poles and last weekend for a demo set one up for my local clubs open house. I put a LDG- Z11 pro auto tuner right at the base, it happens to run on batteries, connected to the vertical itself through a 1:1 current choke and it worked fine with just two elevated radials. It worked on 15/17/20/30/40... and sort of worked on 80m. However on 80 I could not give it a fair test as this was during the day time and the only signals to be heard were local instate stuff, which is about the worst thing to use a vertical on 80m for. Signals on 20m were very strong.

If I were to ground mount the thing, I'd just put down as many radials as you can stand, maybe not all at once, but view it as a project over time. You should REALLY consider going the auto tuner route. You can use the battery powered LDG units, MFJ units that can be powered from DC through coax insertion, or of course the SGC units. Going with a UNUN or balun at the base and tuning in the shack would not be ideal, you would lose several DB. Running a 4:1 balun into the thing would be a terrible idea on 40m I would think, dropping impedance way down and causing a large loss probably.

Jackite fiberglass poles can be had on ebay for around 45-50 dollars shipped. Buy one and use the money saved to put towards a cheap auto tuner.

http://w9oy-sdr.blogspot.com/2009/09/43ft-vert.html there is a good read on remoting a in-shack tuner to the base of a antenna, happens to be a common MFJ auto tuner. The nice thing about MFJ tuners is one, you can power them through DC insertion into the coax, AND for about 40 bucks you can get remote control for them as well so you can manually adjust the tuner if you wish from the shack, that is SLICK and not many people know about it. It hooks up with standard serial cable which can be had for cheap as dirt.

[W0GI]

As was mentioned, this antenna is a kite pole with wire inside. I am not trying to put it down, as some people will spend the extra dollars to have it already made.

But, there is no magic involved. It is a support for a vertical wire. To call it a 80-10 meter antenna is really a stretch. with a proper counterpoise, it would only be a 40 meter vertical. With a tuner hooked to my rain gutter, I guess I would have an 80-10 meter rain gutter. Same thing.

As was also mentioned, mounting a tuner at the base is the key to get a non-resonant vertical to work fairly well. Through coax into a tuner in the shack, and you will be losing a large amount of signal in the coax.

For portable, I use a vertical wire into a tree, and 1/4 wave counterpoise wires for each band, all connected directly into the tuner. I use 5 watts or less, and make lots of contacts, so it must be fairly efficient.

You can make it work, but keep in mind that it is a just a vertical wire, and a base mounted tuner and good counterpoise is needed for this setup to work well.

[KJ4IZJ]

thanks for the input.73s kj4izj