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Re: [IRCA] Array Solutions SAL-30

Hi Brandon,
I'm afraid this has been in my "to do" pile for rather a long time, but I very much enjoyed your submission to the IRCA list about the SAL-30, and the later one about the SAL-12. I was wondering if I could re-publish it in the IRCA Technical Column, and if so, whether you had other things that you would want to add to it?
You mentioned the DKAZ and the DXE NCC-1 with phased active whips, and a more detailed comparison with those might be very interesting. Where did they fall down in comparison with the SAL-30?
One concern I have here is that phased antennas tend to lose a bit of desired station's signal strength while they are reducing the undesired station's signal strength. In Pacific coastal locations, I have sometimes found that loss enough to lose DX in the receiver noise. A test last year with the Wellbrook ALA100 phased array left a FLG100 amplified Flag antenna in the dust as far as nulling, but the Flag was robust enough to deliver better overseas signal strength in spite of the additional domestic interference.
Mind you, I just used the array at Grayland with higher gain head-end preamplifiers, and the array was pretty comparable to a 1000' Beverage, so simply more gain before the phaser may be the key.
In your location, do you ever find (probably in the daytime) that you can null a station into the noise and then can't hear something that you can hear (with lots of interference) on another antenna as I described above? (this in reference to the SAL-12 in particular) 

Thanks.

best wishes

Nick






At 18:50 13-03-14, you wrote:

Hi folks. I just finished up deploying an AS SAL-30 Shared Apex Loop and my
initial observations are that this is by far the best directional antenna
on that I have ever used. My experience with directional antennas over the
years range from small ferrite and wire loops, modest beverages, Wellbrook
K9AY/ALA10/ALA330/DKAZ,  phasing various antenna configurations with
Quantum, Connelly DXP5, and currently a DXE NCC-1 with phased active whips.

The SAL-30 is the best MW antenna that I have had the pleasure of using. On
almost every MW channel I can easily have two stations in the clear, and on
many it is no problem receiving 3 or 4 stations. The UNI directional mode
is amazing, with just the push of the Flip switch you generally find
another station totally dominant. I have found the controller with 8
direction switch to be extremely accurate, making it easy to determine
exactly which direction an UnID is arriving from. Another bonus that I
discovered last evening while experiencing quite a bit of lightning static,
when the pattern was pointed north and the static crashes were extremely
subdued to the point of not being an issue.

I have also found the performance up to the spec'd 8 mhz of this model to
be excellent. In these bands I can null some of the CODAR signals way down,
null utes, determine the direction of a weak signal, and significantly peak
a signal for best SNR. This afternoon I found that on many HF DX signals,
the directionality of this antenna was actually useful up to 15 mHz. On
many DX stations bothered by significant long-path echo, I could always
eliminate the LP component. On HF above 8 mHz, the directional pattern does
not appear to be very useful with strong domestic stations such as the
Tennessee SW broadcasters.

So far, I am extremely pleased with the performance of this antenna. I was
initially very concerned with the cost of the antenna vs performance but I
can now say this was money very well spent. One word of caution is
deploying the mast on the SAL-30. This is a task for 3 people minimum, and
on a totally windless day. With two folks we were able to get 8 of the mast
sections up, but had to wait a week to get a third person to help get that
last mast section put in.

If I can master video and youtube over the weekend, I will look at putting
up some MW specific audio/video.

73,
Brandon Jordan
http://www.swldx.us
Fayette County, TN EM55gc

WinRadio G33DDC, WinRadio G313-e, RFSpace SDR-IQ, Icom R75, Eton E1
Double KAZ Loop (20×88') with Wellbrook FLG100LN-2 Amplifier
DX Engineering DXE-AAPS3 Active Antenna Phasing System
Array Solutions AS-SAL-30 Shared Apex Loop
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