HF antenna

Carsten Groen's (OZ9AAR) personal place

Interests and experiences

HF antenna (40M..6M)

End of 2022 I bought a UltraBeam VL2.3 3 element (5 element on 6M) Yagi antenna for 40 to 6 meters. Wimo in Germany is now the producer/owner of the UltraBeam brand.

The antenna went up on my new 15 meter folding tower in the spring on 2023 with the help of my good friend Lars Robert (a non-ham, but a friend that is alway there for me :) 


So far (winter 2023) the antenna is holding up just fine, and seems to be working really well on all the bands! 


Link to Wimo page with the antenna: https://www.wimo.com/de/ub640-vl2-3

I added 2 more elements on 6M (for a total of 5): https://www.wimo.com/de/ub-opt-6-3


The UltraBeam controller "talks" to my Yaesu FTDX101-MP transceiver, so band change of the antenna happens automatically without any user intervention. Nice and easy!

Rotor for the antenna is a Yaesu G-2800 with a ARCO controller, again from Wimo in Germany. The rotor is mounted on a GA-3000 absorber plate.


Rotor: https://www.wimo.com/de/yaesu-antenna-rotors-with-controller

Absorber plate: https://www.wimo.com/de/ga-3000


So far the system has held up to a few storms, some ice and snow, and seems to still perform as the day it was installed. EDIT: The boom to mast plate got severely bent in a storm, changed it to a stainless steel plate instead.


Below is a number of pictures of the antenna parts, the installation etc.


First a small testvideo of the stepper units of the antenna:

Next follows a number of pictures of the different parts and assembly of the antenna. All the hardware was clearly marked and of great quality.



2022-09-22 16.34.12
2022-09-22 16.34.18
2022-09-22 16.34.21
2022-09-22 16.34.36
2022-10-16 15.56.45
2022-10-16 15.55.08
2022-10-16 16.25.47
2022-10-19 10.30.40
2022-10-16 16.06.33
2022-10-19 10.30.24
2022-09-22 16.34.24
2022-10-19 10.30.30
2022-10-16 16.06.27
2022-09-22 16.34.33
2022-09-22 16.34.40
2022-10-19 10.30.20
2022-10-19 10.30.35
2022-10-19 14.56.54
2022-10-19 11.02.24
2022-10-19 11.02.30
2022-11-03 11.17.01
2022-10-19 14.56.44
2022-11-03 11.17.28
2022-10-16 16.25.53
2022-10-19 10.30.33
2022-09-22 16.34.29
2022-10-19 11.15.07
2022-10-16 16.52.38
2022-10-16 16.52.44
2022-11-03 11.37.54
2022-10-16 15.43.08
2022-11-03 11.38.05
2022-10-16 17.18.56

Next is a number of pictures from the installation of the antenna on the tower

2023-04-09 17.19.01
2023-04-09 13.40.21
2023-04-15 20.22.37
2023-04-15 17.49.36
2023-04-15 17.27.25
2023-04-15 17.27.12
2023-04-15 16.14.43
2023-04-09 17.38.28
2023-04-15 16.15.28
2023-04-09 17.38.23
2023-04-15 15.26.24
2023-04-15 15.26.22
2023-04-15 15.26.14
2023-04-15 17.07.04
2023-04-15 16.15.08
2023-04-15 15.26.20
2023-04-15 16.14.41
2023-04-15 17.50.58
2023-04-15 17.59.53
2023-04-15 17.07.01
2023-04-09 17.37.27
2023-04-09 17.37.15
2023-04-09 17.37.31
2023-04-09 17.37.52
2023-04-15 15.26.17
2023-04-15 16.15.05
2023-04-15 16.15.16
2023-04-15 16.15.18
2023-04-15 16.15.43
2023-04-15 16.15.47
2023-04-15 16.15.45
2023-04-09 17.37.42
2023-04-09 17.37.46
2023-04-09 17.38.09
2023-04-09 17.38.16
2023-04-09 17.38.20
2023-04-09 17.38.32
2023-04-15 16.15.01
2023-04-15 16.15.19

We had a good winter storm here, and the boom to mast plate was bent pretty bad (alu plate). I got a stainless steel plate instead and mounted that. At the same time I adjusted the two 6M passive elements. I had difficulties getting a good match on 6M, it turned out that the match was at 49 MHz! I moved the "director" (passive 2) element to 75cm instead of the standard 70 cm, and the element length was shortened from 285 cm to 277 cm. This moved the match from 49 MHz to 50 MHz. Below is the "before" and "after" sweeps:

New boom to mast plate: