6 metres, 6 weeks.

Well, after a lot of thought, I've opted for a 3-element Yagi for portable 6m operations.  

Although there are a number of good antenna makers out there, I have a definite preference for Innovantennas, who made my 12m LFA.  That antenna, as I've highlighted many times, is extremely well-built and took one hurricane-force storm after another, for many years.  When I came to move recently, the whole thing dismantled smoothly in minutes.  It will see service again, one day.

Justin, G0KSC, was characteristically helpful in coming up with a modification of a standard 3-ele OWL Yagi, which will allow for easy compactification for car transport.  Due to high demand and, no doubt, difficulties we are all experiencing due to Brexit, this will take 6 weeks to be ready.  

The 4m version of the 3-ele OWL Yagi.  Image: Innovantennas.

Although it was tempting to go for a higher gain model, such an antenna would quickly become difficult to manage when portable.  Because I want to operate the antenna in vertical polarisation, to maximise the potential of the seaside, the rear-mounted 3-ele works out as a very good compromise.

Pattern in vertical polarisation for generic 3-ele Yagi.

 

Deployed at the beach, MMANA-GAL predicts just over 13dBi total gain at the horizon.   This may well prove interesting for summertime DX propagation to Japan, for example.  I typically use 15W when portable, sometimes pushing it to 25W when needed.  So I should see something like 546W effective output at that upper end, and 328W at the lower input end.