The SteppIR 4-element Beam

摘要

This antenna is not for the faint-hearted, nor for the small garden. I had read glowing reports of the Stepplr beams, and regularly talk to John, VK2SB, who uses a 3-element version. John always has an outstanding signal. I decided to go for the 4-element version, having a large enough garden to accommodate it. I also toyed with the idea of having the 30/40 metre add-on element, but I decided against this. The antenna was ordered from Vine Antennas and arrived in three huge boxes. One contained the fibre-glass tubing that make up the four elements, another contained the boom material and the 50MHz elements and the third contained the four motor units (known as Element Housing Units, or EHUs) with a box of clamps, nuts and bolts, rolls of tape and the controller. It always pays to check the contents of the packages against the parts list to make sure that everything has been included, plus spend some time reading the manual first, preferably several times. Any errors can then be addressed prior to assembly.