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From: jhs%Mitre-Bedford@d3unix.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.ham-radio
Subject: Re: The new Butternut miniature beam
Message-ID: <368@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Date: Thu, 1-Aug-85 11:36:08 EDT
Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.368
Posted: Thu Aug  1 11:36:08 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 3-Aug-85 09:46:04 EDT
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The Austin mini-beam is a product of

		Austin Custom Antennas
		P.O. Box 357
		Sandown, NH 03873.


The owner, Dick Austin, K1QIZ, can be reached via mail there or at
(603) 887-2926.

Actually, he makes two beams, to my knowledge, one of which is VERY small,
like maybe 10 by 15 feet (a guess) and 5 or 6 pounds.  This is the one that
has about 4.5 or 5 dB gain over a dipole.  It covers 20 through 10 (including
any new bands that happen to pop up in there) and is available in a "portable"
version that can be knocked down into about 5-foot lengths and carried in
a canvas bag.  Could be real neat for field day!  Either version can be
mounted on standard TV masting and rotated with a standard TV rotator without
strain.  It probably has less weight and wind loading than a lot of big TV
antennas!

The other one covers 40 through 10, with somewhat more gain except on 40, as I
recall.  This one is a lot bigger, like 30 by 35 feet or so (again a guess).
It is also heavier, but for a 40-meter beam it is tiny and light by comparison
to other ones available.  It is probably lighter and smaller than some
tribanders.  This one I believe is WARC-band ready and covers all of them,
both present and future, if they are between 7 and 30 MHz.  The price you pay
for this is that you supply the funny tuning reactance needed down there in
your tuner instead of having him precompute it and install it for you up in
the beam.  And you should use open-wire line or TV twinlead (best foam type
available to you) instead of coax except possibly for a short run from the
tuner to the balun.

Incidentally, Austin also sells a variety of other antennas, including
various collinear verticals for 146, 220, and 430 MHz bands, two of which
cover ALL THREE BANDS in one whip, a scanner antenna designed to cover most
scanner frequencies of interest and to give decent performance over the whole
band, and a telescoping half-wave for your 2-meter HT.  His latest thing is a
nifty new antenna for 900 MHz cellular telephone service which reportedly
runs rings around some of the antennas being sold for that purpose.  His VHF
and UHF antennas are with few exceptions independent of ground and none of
them use radials.  They are, however, well decoupled from the feed line so
that the pattern is nearly ideal without radials and without adjustment.

Also, he really MEANS the "custom" in his company name -- he will make up
specials for repeaters, mobile homes, or your hang-glider.  He will talk
antenna theory with you at length, even if it helps you to avoid buying one of
his products by building your own!


					73,
					John S., W3IKG