Parallel Dipole for the 6 meter band

 My 3 element gamma-fed yagi crashed about a year ago.  I hadn't done anything with it, and its mangled carcass has been lurking behind the shed.  Recently my club built a cage dipole for 40m, which got me thinking.  Why couldn't I just make a cage or parallel dipole for 6 meters?  It should work.

So over lunch I took the old antenna apart, and tossed the broken pieces.  There were enough good parts to make my experimental parallel dipole.

The pieces I had left over were just a tad short, so it does cover the whole band at 1.5:1 at top of the band, with the ideal resonance somewhere around 51Mhz.

Hi-Par 'Saturn 6' Halo overhaul

 I was fortunate enough to receive this old Saturn 6 Halo antenna from a friend.  It had been stored for the last 25 years.  The aluminum condition was good, but just needed a good polishing.

The fasteners were even in decent shape.  I only replaced the ones at the feed point.

It came without the original matching network.  After reading this eHam article, I learned that the impedance required a 4:1 transformer.  The details of the construction were provided.

I first tried the 25 ohm coax (parallel RG-58) @ 37".  I wasn't quite satisfied with this.  The coax tail was cumbersome and the match wasn't quite as good as it might be.

I then wound the wire transformer.

8 turns of 14 gauge around a 9/16" form spread 2" long.

One end connects to one feed point on the antenna.  Two turns in it connects to the coax ground.  6 turns in it connects to the other feed point of the antenna.  The 8th turn connects to the center of the coax connector.

The whole thing fit in a nice plastic enclosure (formerly from a wall wart).  A little squeeze here and there and the transformer functions well with a much better ideal impedance at resonance.  The ability to massage the transformer made it superior to the coax matching method in my mind.

We are ready for Field Day.