My HXL-17 Hexbeam

I took down my HXL-17 Hexbeam today. It has served me well, and I enjoyed having it up for the last three years. Some history

I bought this curious antenna from Mike Traffie himself when I was at Dayton in 2004. At the time, I was interested in this novel antenna and thought that 17 meters was a perfect testbed to satisfy my curiosity. Now $300 was allot to spend on a whim like this, but I had some extra "walking around" money that year, so why not?

I put it up on a pole mounted on the chimney at the peak of my ranch house (shown in the background in the pic). My guess it was up 28-30' from the ground. I also bought a light duty Hygain AR-35 "TV" rotator and mounted it all together. This was the recommendation from Traffie and the literature, so as to evaluate their claims.

I was very pleased with the results. No, it won't replace a full size mono band Yagi at 65', but I have to tell you, it is the best antenna I have ever used at this low height. I found the front to back ratio to be good, and always got good reports. If the band was open, I was right in the mix with everyone else.

My review on the air to a California ham brought about an unsolicited phone call from Mike Traffie himself. I was quite surprised that he was in much despair over my review. I thought it [the review] to be quite complementary in stating pretty much what I just said in the paragraph above. He was perplexed as to why I was not dimantling my tribander at 65' now that I owned the Hexbeam. I explained to him that if I was restricted in height and had to have a stealthy low profile antenna, the Hexbeam surely would be at the top of my list. I described its performance as "par" at 28' with my multi band Yagi at 65'. If you asked me, that's a complement. He wanted me to say it was better. We parted friends.

I think I'm going to sell it. It was fun, but I do not need its stealth or low height performance, per-se, because I already have my Force 12 (now at 85') and have no restrictions where I live.

I think you will agree about the stealth part. I took a bunch of pictures of it with my XYL's Olympus E500 ( a top notch camera) and the pic above was the best one, all-be-it not so good.

See you in the pileups!