Vine 6M4DX

A few weeks ago a message came up on my radio club message board offering a Vine 6M4DX 4 element 6m beam for sale, now I've not worked much on 6m and in truth I don't tend to working on anything other than 2m and 70cm but the antenna was cheap £40 pounds so I emailed the seller Colin and bought the beam.  

Now I wasn't holding out for much as it's a secondhand beam but upon picking the beam up I was pleasantly surprised as the beam came in the original box and been taken down and packed away with the bits marked and fitting placed into plastic bags, happy days.

I thought that the beam was missing any instructions and I was unsure of how to fit the hairpin match so emailed the manufacturer which I discovered had ceased trading in 2016 but there website is still present with an email so I emailed them not expecting a response.    To my utter surprise Ron at the aforementioned company emailed me back with 12 hours with all the specs and fitting instructions  which I thought was amazing and I only wish some companies that are trading could match this defunct companies customer support. 

The Vine 6M4DX has the following radiation pattern. 

6M4DX Radiation Pattern

I also managed to pick up for free an older rotator and controller so this would get me QRV 6m for next to nothing from a friend of mine so even more happy days.

Here's my nephew Fred and my mate Mal G1NOX
baking in the sun putting the beam together. 

It took Fred and Mal about 4 hours to construct the beam and get it up on the chimney.

The completed beam up on the chimney stack

When I tested the VSWR the beam gave less than 1.5:1 across the whole 6m band which is fine for my purposes.  

Now typically once the beam was up the rotator controller died within 5 minutes, oh bother so I need to fix that before I can the beam a full work out.  But all in all a great bit of kit for peanuts and gets me active on 6m.