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Immediately below is a photo of my new 144 mhz EME array in completed form. Below that are photos of the construction and assembly. The array consists of four M2 2MXP20 yagis, a KL6M preamp, an AlfaSpid az/el rotor, phasing lines, one M2 four port power divider, one homebrew four port divider (kindly given to me by Steve N4PZ), and a Transco Y relay in a waterproof case for polarity switching. My home is in an antenna restricted community, so I never dreamed I'd be able to have such a nice array. Many thanks to Pete N8PR, who both allowed me to put this up on his property and actually did the lion's share of the assembly work (a big job). The array was first put into service on 22 October 2011 during the ARRL EME contest, and so far it is working well, signals are much better than they were with my prior array of two 2M9SSBs.
At the start, Pete put the rotor on a short piece of pipe, and we assembled the H frame.
Then Pete lifted the heavy rotor to the top of the 20' Rohn tower.
After the rotor and H frame were raised into position on top of the tower, the first 2 antenna booms were secured, without the elements.
Then the third boom went up.
Then the fourth boom.
The most tedious part was securing all 80 elements to the four booms.
After the elements were all on, Pete made some final adjustments to square up the antennas.
Pete says everthing is ready.
And here are the antennas pointed at the moon and making EME contacts.
Here's a closer look at the center of the array, with the power dividers and polarity switching relay on top of the rotor and the preamp below.
And that's me inside the shack. Left to right, Astron 13v power supply (portion of 24v p/s visible in back), Lunar Link amplifier (Bird element and sequencer on top of amp), FT-847 transceiver (AlfaSpid controller on top shelf, wattmeter on top of controller), and two Thinkpads.
Photos of the OM3BD antenna farm.
Photos of OE/OM/HA/NZ5N, my operation from 3 countries at one time
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