An Antenna Experiment...

I'm sure you've all seen pictures of portable Hustler Antennas mounted on a single mount on a mast. Have you ever wondered why Hamsticks have never done the same?

It's getting cold up here in the "Great White North", these days and the less time I have to spend outside changing Hamsticks while operating portable, the better I like it. For a few days I contemplated buying a few Hustler Antennas and testing out their multiple antenna adapter mount....but then I thought "Why waste the money?". I have Hamsticks, all I needed was the mount.

Lucky for me, Don VE3MNE, had the mount, and he didn't need it...Yahoo! The adapter plate was quickly mounted on one of my mag-mounts, and off I went to Lemoine Point, CA-5141, to do a quick POTA activation with the new antenna system....but would it work? Would there be interaction between the three antennas? I was sure there would be, but how bad could it be?

I have to admit it was a bit unwieldy putting the antennas on the mount, you really need three hands to do it, but it got done. You also must remember that everything takes longer in the cold, so don't rush. The lengths of the individual whips were not changed, I just left them as they were when I use them individually, so I did expect some issues with that.

The mount put up on the roof of the truck with a 40m, 20m and a 10m Hamstick on it, I could actually put a fourth antenna on the mount, but I thought that might be pushing my luck a bit. Three contacts were made on both 10m and 40m and another twelve contacts on 20m. 

So what actually happened? Well, there were no issues at all. It worked as I had hoped it would, with no noticeable interactions between the individual whips that I could see or hear. I had no negative comments about my signal, and they tuned as normal with the Elecraft KX3 ATU. Too bad I didn't think of this last winter!

The other telling point is that I saw no difference in what my daily contact map looked like. I still worked the same areas of Canada and the USA as I normally do. 

I think it was a great success and I can see this antenna system being used a lot this winter.

Here's a few pictures of the antenna:

And, here's todays contact map with that antenna:

Stay Safe Out There!