Top Band

 

The 160 meter band is one of the last bands I started on. The first antennas I used were dipoles and inverted-L antennes. A dipole on 160 meter needs height otherwise it will not realy be a dx antenna. The inverted-L antennas works fine but when bringing down the crank-up tower in windy conditions brings down down the whole antenne, no dx on 160 meters anymore. So I decided to go for a vertical antenna and bought a V160s from Titanex.

The antenna was built up just before CQWW SSB 2002 and during the huge storm during the contest came down again. This becasue the base was not secured enough to the ground, I didn;t use concrete as discribed in the manual becasue it’s a temporarily installation. It has to be removed during the summer.

Titanex helped me with replacement parts and we repaired it. Also a much more stable base was made. Also we decided to guy it on 2 heights with 4 guy wires in stead of 3 wires recommended by the manual.Next year when the vertical will be put up again we will put an extra set of guy wires at the six meter level to make sure that it will be up also during the very windy conditions in the North of the Netherl

After a few years the top of the antenna came down and could not be replaced.
I decided to use only the lower part of the tintanex antenna and put on top a spider fiberglass pole.
This is standing now for a while and does a very good job.
Below you can see my home brew switch box for the vertical.
It switches 160, 80m and 40m.
With a smal motor i can turn the c from the shack and tune it  to best swr.

Switch box Titanex vertical. 160m, 80m and 40m.

The new base plate for the v160s

The new base plate is made in two parts.

The new base plate for the 160 meter vertical. Detail of the base plate.
Base plate ready for installation. The original base from Titanex.
The base with the tuning box for switching between 160m, 80m and 40m
The PVC box at the right covers the tuning box for the rain.
The 160 meter vertical. At the left two of the verticals from the 80 meter 4 square.