Joe W3GMS had a long unused Hy-Gain14 AVQ sitting behind a shed and asked if I'd like it. I brought it home, steel wooled it, replaced old hardware, and prepared to get it on the air.
I sledge hammered a pipe into the ground using a level to keep it vertical. I bought three 100' rolls of galvanized welded wire mesh which I unrolled at 60 degree angles from each other intersecting next to the pole. After connecting to the antenna base I seem to have a pretty good ground plane. From eastern Pennsylvania, my 2nd qso on the antenna was to Cambodia at 100 W, which left me smiling all day.
The published vswr values are shown below:
and I was very happy after using an antenna analyzer (at feed point) to achieve fairly close results as those published by Hy-Gain. Green areas are ham bands.
