The HI-Z 4 Square Array Receiving System
After several years of service from my K9AY receiving loop, I seemed to
hit a brick wall in my quest for DXCC on 160 meters. No new countries were being heard on 160, and I
had some evidence that I was getting out better than I was
hearing. The K9AY's performance was compromised by being located
too close to a multi band vertical and my tower and 160 meter Inverted Vee.
.
I was Googling for low band receive antenna ideas when I found
http://www.hizantennas.com. After reading a
few eHam reviews and examining the information on HI-Z's web site, I
decided that this product deserved investigation.
After thoroughly testing the patience of Dick and Lee at HI-Z Antennas
with multiple questions over a period of several weeks (and enjoying
prompt and helpful answers) I placed an order with HI-Z Antennas for
their 4 Square Receive Array. The boxes were well packed and the
instructions were easy to follow.
My neighbor kindly provided permission to install the array in his hay
field, and the installation went very quickly. I did make
two installation mistakes, however, that I'm reporting here so others
will learn from my errors.
1) The verticals are supposed to be positioned at the corners of
an 80 foot square. Make sure you actually create a square and NOT
a parallelogram! I thought I'd made a square until I found that
each corner was not equidistant from the control box at the center of
the array. Two cables seemed to be too long and two cables were too
short. Oops!
2) Speaking of measuring, make sure you have enough coax and
control cable to reach from the array to your shack. I honestly
thought I had enough cable.......
After a 24 hour delay that was caused by the cables not reaching the
shack, I was finally able to try this antenna on the low bands to see
if I had made a good investment. As you can see from the photo
below, I installed the system just as our first snow of the season arrived
in November 2010.
The first evening, Curacao, Hungary and Bulgaria were quickly added to
the log on 160 CW. They were easy copy on the array despite being
difficult to impossible to copy on my 160 Inverted Vee transmitting
antenna. On 40 meters, a KH6 was much stronger on the receive
array than he was on my multi-band vertical. I also
listened on 80 meters for a while and realized that I need to get a
decent transmitting antenna in place ASAP. My vertical has issues
on 80 meters when I run the amp and, now that I can hear better, I NEED
to get out as well as I can hear. I copied a lot of DX in the CW
portion of the band on that first evening, but the most amazing moment
came when I paused to listen to a SSB DX net of some sort on
3.794. There were a series of EU stations working a station in
Guyana. The EU stations were Q5 with the array listening NE but
were NOT audible with the array listening in any other direction.
The Guyana station was Q5 with the array listening SE but, when I'd
switch to the NE to copy the EU stations, the Guyana station
disappeared.
Since that first evening, I've been doing a LOT of listening (compared
to transmitting) in an effort to learn how to best use this
antenna. Despite very limited shack time, this antenna has proven
to be one of the best investments I've ever made in ham radio and my
country total on 160 has now exceeded 100. The antenna
routinely permits me to log stations, such as HE3OM, EU3AR and 4Z1UF,
that can't be detected with the Inverted Vee. The best analogy I
can come up with is to compare listening for 20 meter DX with a dipole
vs. listening with a yagi.
The first season's use focused on 160 meters because I lack a reliable
transmitting antenna for 80/75 and 40 meters. By the Fall of 2011
I hope to have that problem solved so this fine receiving system can be
used to its full potential.
