VHF/UHF Operating

I've been thinking about doing some VHF and UHF SSB operating. I've had plenty of experience with 2-meter and 70-cm FM repeater and simplex operation, but I have not had much operating time using SSB on these bands. Specifically, I am talking about 6-meters, 2-meters, and 70-cm. I remember about eight years ago at a Field Day, I made a contact on 6-meter sideband from here in Columbus, Ohio to a station somewhere in Florida. That contact was not made on my station. If I remember correctly, the radio was some Icom IC-706 variant (it might have even been the original IC-706; this was probably in 2001), and the antenna was a three-element beam. Even though the contact was not made using my station, it was exciting nonetheless. I'm not sure what recently got me interesting in this aspect of amateur radio, but it was probably just a magazine article or a web page.



I realize that the convention for VHF/UHF sideband is horizontal polarization, but I don't really want to mess around with tower sections and a rotator. I'm looking at antennas that provide an omnidirectional, horizontally-polarized radiation pattern. I realize that such an antenna would not provide the same gain that the antenna pictured above would, but I believe that if you stack them and phase them accordingly, you will add gain. The antennas that I am currently researching are manufactured by KU4AB. Phil offers horizontally-polarized antennas for 10m, 6m, 2m, 1.25m, and 70cm. I'm interested in the ones for 6, 2, and 70cm. The antennas are supposedly tuned for the SSB portions of the bands. They are made using solid aluminum rod, and have stainless steel hardware. The KU4AB.com website claims that pairs of their SQ-432, SQ-144, and SQ-50 can be nested on a mast and only take up 12 feet. Also, according to a claim on the website, Gordon West, WB6NOA, was able to make a 2-meter contact from California to Hawaii using the SQ-144 antenna. That's a distance of 2400 miles. That's exciting. I'm going to continue to look at these (they do get good reviews on Eham.net), but I'll see what else is available, too. I'll have more to report.

73