50Mhz Halo

Tuesday night brought the 50Mhz contest, some good conditions on 28Mhz so I thought I would see what is around on 50Mhz. My discone seems to work alright, but has a high SWR on 6m, so I decided to connect my 60ft HF longwire to the FT-817 with the ATU connected.

I was amazed at the result!

I found that I could tune the longwire at 50Mhz and during the contest could hear lots more stations and worked some stations using the longwire.I remember doing this once on 4m years ago and worked a few stations there during a contest.I also got my homemade 50Mhz transverter out with the FT101 and this still works fine.Now I am thinking about a suitable antenna for 6m, I have ordered a 2 element HB9CV for 4m and wonder if this will work on 6m as well. I used to have an old Band 1 TV aerial that worked fine on these bands, but when I took my old antennas down I threw it away!

This got thinking about using a halo for 50Mhz. I have never seen one before, but I did use one on 2m clipped on my car window for mobile use. Now I know that I don't have enough room for a rotatable beam for this band, so this seems like a good alternative.

Type: Folded dipole antenna Frequency: 50-52MHz

Overall square size:

Approx 800mm (30 inches)

VSWR: 1.5:1 or better

Power: 200 Watts Connection:

Direct connection to dipole centre
Omni directional

Sounds good to me!