HEXBEAM works on 6m band

I've been a happy user of Traffie Hexbeam for about 5 years.
It works pretty good without any adjustment and any maintenance upto now.

This antenna has very unique hexagonal shape but realizes both very small foot-print and high gain at the same time.

Although the price for 5-band type is around 1100USD not so cheap, but it is reasonable when you consider the total system cost including tower, rotator, coaxial feeders, etc. You can enjoy 5 band with one antenna, one coax and small tv rotor with very low height! (see photo above which is extracted from Traffie's website)

In addition not only specified 5 bands (20, 30, 17, 12 and 10m), it can be used on 6m too! See the SWR plots for 6m below;


Amazing!

SWR Plot by DMU-2000

The DMU-2000, a band scope for Yaesu FT-2000, has a function to plot SWR of the antenna connected to the FT-2000.

This is SWR plots for 40m band, antenna is Create Design AFA-40, 2-el HB9CV.

The left edge is 7000KHz, the red line is 7100KHz.
The SWR seems pretty low between 7000-7100. But above 7100KHz, it becomes very high.
So, I must use antenna tuner when I will QRV at above 7100KHz from coming April after the 7100-7200 band is permited in JA on 2009-3-30.

Here is the SWR of 20m band , antenna is HEXBEAM.

I bought normal setting HEXBEAM so that the SWR is optimized for phone band.

FT-2000 new firmware

The latest firmware has been released in Jan,2009.
Firmware update procedure is not announced officially in JA market.
That means Yaesu dose not allow Japanese cutomer to update the firmware of FT-2000 by themselves. If we did it, warranty of that equipment is terminated immediately, e even if the warranty period has not been finished yet.

Besides, in US it is opened and the latest firmware can be downladed free of charge from Yaesu America Website.

Update procedure is little bit complicated, but the step by step procedure is described in the Yaesu website, and my local friend, Jun/JQ1BWT who is an active electric engineer kindly helped me to do it.

After istall of the new firmware "PEP2000", my FT-2000D has been re-born.