£500 HEX-BEAM PLUS SHIPPING

£535 HEX-BEAM with 1:1 BALUN PLUS SHIPPING

www.4w6a.com

CONTACT ME FOR SHIPPING PRICE, I SHIP WORLDWIDE

ANTENNA IS PLUG AND PLAY, NO CUTTING OR MEASURING, JUST ASSEMBLE AND ERECT!

The Hexbeam is an antenna design that has been around for quite a number of years, first produced commercially by Mike Traffie from www.hexbeam.com this is what many refer to as the "Classic Hexbeam" This has a turning radius of approx 9' 6" or 2.9m and covers 20, 17, 15, 12 and 10m

In 2008 Steve G3TXQ redesigned the Hexbeam making it more broadband, in fact you will not need a tuner at all if everything is assembled correctly. This antenna is referred to as the "G3TXQ Broad Band Hexagonal Beam" and this is the antenna referred to trough out this website. The turning Radius has been increased to 10' 8" or 3.25m, this is a small price to pay for an improvement in bandwidth.

Radius 128 Inches or 325 CM, this is measurement from centre-post to spreader tip

The Hub
This is the centre of the antenna, the centre post that the wire elements connect to sits on the top and the stub mast sits below. This is also where the six fibreglass spreaders are attached. The hub is made of a 30cm sq aluminium (some builders have used wood or even thick plastic) sheet cut into a hexagonal shape with two steel tube clamps fitted (one top and one bottom) to support the centre post and stub mast in the centre of the hexagonal. 12 U bolts are used to fix the spreaders to the hub, two for each spreader.

The Centre Post
The most complex part of the antenna, some builders place the coax on the out side and weather proof it, this is fine but sooner or later you will have to replace the coax as weather will take its toll in the end. This is inexpensive so no big deal and it does the job. You can go to the extreme and house the coax inside, this can be fiddly and time consuming unless you have a crafty way of doing it! There can be up to six bands on most G3TXQ broadband hexbeams and each band will need a centre and a braid connection so 12 feed points in all, two per band. This is where the wire elements attach to. There is also a fixing point attached to the top of this post for the spreaders support cords to be attached to.

The Spreaders
Six spreaders are used to form the hexagonal shape. The ends are bent towards the centre post and attached to it via support cords fixed to the top of the post, this gives it it's up-side down umbrella shape. D-loops or cable ties are generally used as fixing points on each spreader for the wire elements to be attached to, this forms the shape of the elements and keeps them slightly taught!

Wire Elements
The wire elements are generally made from 14 or 16swg bare copper stranded wire with terminal eyes soldered on the ends. There are two driven elements per band and one reflector. Configuration is driven, spacer, reflector, spacer and driven. The spacing's are made of Dacron cord or similar non-conductive material and fixed to the terminal ends by simple means such as tying knot if you so wish! Each band has a wire element and they are threaded trough the d-loops, cable ties or any other non-conductive method you can design or think of to attached them to the spreaders. Assembly is done by attaching one end of the element to the one feed point terminal and going complete circle, or hex with the other end until you arrive back at the other feed point. Repeat for all other bands!!

A big thanks to Steve G3TXQ for all his help in getting this project off the ground, and also to many of the forum members for their time in replying to the many emails exchanged in answering the many questions I have asked in the past.