Details
The "Spiderbeam" is a light weight beam which is ideally suited for portable operations. Due to the construction with light glass fibre tubes and special antenna wire the antenna can be packed down to a transport length of only 120cm. With only 9kg weight is is well suited for dx-peditions.
Improved version 2: The new version is even easier to assemble, many details have been improved. The glassfibre tubes are no longer telescopic but tubular, so they cannot slide down unwanted. No more tie wraps, no more sticky tape, the wire elements keep a constant distance. The wire insulators are now ready to use, no more epoxy glue required here. The wire elements are fastened to the tubes with re-useable Velcro(r), no more tie wraps required. Also electrically the antenna has been improved. The new Spiderbeam is less susceptible to changes in environment, bandwidth on 10m has been improved, a future extension to 12/17m has become possible.
The spiderbeam consists of three yagis on one boom. 3 elements for 20m, 3 elements for 15m and 4 element on 10m. This results in a gain of up to 9dBD over real ground. Due to the light construction a small aluminum telescopic mast is suffcient.
The Spiderbeam is a kit, it has to be assembled before first use. At first the wire elements with the guy lines have to assembled. Even if the assembly has become much easier you should do this at home and not in the DX spot... The setup itself takes about 45 minutes. Due to the use of special antenna wire and high quality Kevlar guy lines a high stability and reproduceability is achieved. The feed is done with one common balun, only one feed line required.
Reinforced 'Heavy Duty' version for stationary use
With the success of the Spiderbeam many customers also wanted to use this antenna as a permanent installation at home, not only in a portable fashion. When installing an antenna fixed and permanently at one point, weight is less of an issue, but the construction must withstand many years of permanent use. So a new 'Heavy Duty' version of the Spiderbeam was created, to offer you the optimum for each application, whether portabel or fixed operations.
The 'Heavy Duty' version has these mechanical changes:
- Special, reinforced fibreglass tubes with double-sized tube wall (2mm)
- Aluminium contruction of center plate with twice the thickness (2mm)
- Rubber coated stainless steel hose clamps instead of Velcro straps
- A second upper support strut (optional)
