Specifications

From March 2008 QST © ARRL
behave well when presented with multiple
signals or noise in the passband. The FT-950’s
DNF effectively notched a single tone by
60 dB when nothing else is in the passband,
but with more than one tone, it sometimes
adds audible distortion products and notches
the upper tone by a varying amount. Also,
DNF is either on or off regardless of mode,
so when activated it notches out desired CW
Reviewed by Mark Wilson, K1RO
Product Review Editor
As the days started to get shorter in
late 2006, on a whim I decided to hang a
160 meter dipole from a convenient tree. It’s
not much of an antenna, really — perhaps
35 feet high in the center and 15 feet high at
the ends, fed with nearly 150 feet of RG-58
and RG-8X. But I managed to have quite a
bit of fun with it in the 160 meter contests
sponsored by ARRL and CQ. Running
barefoot, it was a thrill to work some West
Coast and DX stations. I called anyone I
could hear, no matter how strong they were.
Sometimes they heard me, sometimes they
didn’t. I even was able to put together some
decent runs during the contest.
Many nights the band was noisy, often
a constant S7 to S9. It was difficult to hear
weaker stations through the noise, the loud
static crashes and the jumble of massive sig-
nals from nearby stations. Sometimes I used
12 to 18 dB of attenuation in my receiver just
to make it palatable. I really needed to look
into a dedicated low-noise receive antenna.
Over the summer I picked up a copy of
ON4UN’s Low-Band DXing and spent a few
evenings poring over the detailed chapter
on receiving antennas.
3
John describes and
evaluates antennas ranging from simple to
awe-inspiring. Although Low-Band DXing
make it clear that other (bigger) receiving
antennas such as Beverages and vertical ar-
rays offer better performance, I settled on a
small terminated loop mainly because of its
small footprint and ease of construction.
Array Solutions K9AY Loop System
Array Solutions offers a turnkey version
of the popular terminated loop receiving an-
tenna first described by Gary Breed, K9AY,
in September 1997 QST.
4
Consisting of two
triangular wire loops about 85 feet long, hung
Array Solutions AS-AYL-4 Receiving Antenna
3
J. Devoldere, ON4UN’s Low-Band DXing, 4th ed.
Available from your ARRL dealer or the ARRL
Bookstore, ARRL order no. 9140. Price, $39.95
plus shipping. Telephone [phone], or toll-
free in the US 888-277-5289; www.arrl.org/
shop/; [e-mail].
4
G. Breed, K9AY, “The K9AY Terminated Loop —
A Compact, Directional Receiving Antenna,”
QST, Sep 1997, pp 43-46.
signals as soon as they are tuned in. DNF
settings are stored in memory separately for
each VFO.
Summary
Employing the latest digital technol-
ogy found in more expensive transceiv-
ers, the FT-950 is well suited as a main
radio, backup rig or as part of a SO2R or
multioperator contest station. New HF
licensees or casual operators will appreciate
the rig’s basic operation while contesters,
DXers, net operators and others will de-
light in the FT-950’s competition grade
heritage.
Manufacturer: Vertex Standard,
10900 Walker St, Cypress, CA 90630; tel
714-827-7600; www.yaesu.com.
Bottom Line
The AS-AYL-4 receiving antenna
system from Array Solutions is an
effective way to improve your listen-
ing experience on the low bands,
especially if space is limited.
at right angles to one another from a single
25 foot high support, Gary’s antenna caught
the imagination of many suburban low-band
operators. From the center of the antenna,
you need just 15 to 20 feet in four directions,
making it possible to put up on a small lot.
Some switching, a good ground rod, a vari-
able termination resistor and a 9:1 matching
transformer are required to make the antenna
work. Depending on your receiver’s sensitiv-
ity, you may need an external preamplifier.
For this review, we purchased the AS-
AYL-4 controller and AS-AYL-4 MW
wire/mast kit from Array Solutions. The
controller, manufactured by Wolf RF Sys-
tems, consists of indoor and outdoor units.
The indoor unit houses the control cir-
cuitry, a 15-dB gain preamplifier and a
bandpass filter designed to pass 160 and
80 meter signals but reject those from AM
and shortwave broadcast band transmit-
ters. The weatherproof outdoor unit, which
mounts at the antenna base, is for switching
relays, matching transformer and termination
resistors.
You can use the controller with your own
loops, but we tried the mast/wire kit from
Array Solutions. The kit includes a fiberglass
mast, wire, guy rope, insulators and all the
hardware in one convenient package. Every-
thing is cut to length and ready to assemble.
You can also order the kit without the mast.
In addition to the material supplied by Ar-
ray Solutions, you need to provide a coaxial
feed line, a 6 conductor control cable (20
gauge wire for runs up to 250 feet) and an
8 foot long,
5
⁄8 inch diameter ground rod. A
local home center had ground rods and some
sprinkler wire perfect for the control cable
(seven 18 gauge conductors, with a jacket
suitable for direct burial).
Assembling the Antenna
UPS dropped off two boxes, one with
the controller and one with the mast/wire
kit. All of the pieces were clearly described
in the manual and a quick inventory showed
nothing missing.
I assembled the antenna over the course
of three afternoons the week before Thanks-
giving. My heavily wooded lot means that
antenna projects generally start with a
chainsaw. The first afternoon was devoted to
clearing and disposing of a couple of trees
and some brush behind the garage and driv-
ing the ground rod. Unfortunately I hit a rock
after driving the ground rod in 4.5 feet (in this
part of New England, I was glad to get that
far). I ended up cutting the rod at ground level
and later installed a few radial wires under
the loops as suggested in the manual.
The ground rod also serves as the base for
the mast. First you slip a piece of thick wall
aluminum tubing over the rod and secure it
with supplied bolts. Next comes an aluminum
ring that slides over the tubing and fastens