DL7APV - Silent Key

It was sad to hear about the passing of Bernd, DL7APV who was a well known figure on the VHF & UHF bands. As can be seen from the image above, he built an impressive antenna array for the 432 MHz band which allowed him to make contacts with many radio amateurs around the world by bouncing signals off the moon.

The array for 70cms was made up of 128 x 11-element Yagi antennas which had a calculated gain of 33.7 dBd. He first got a licence in 1975, made his first moon bounce contact on 432 MHz in 1983, got DXCC on 432 MHz in 2012 and finally worked all 50 US states in 2016, all from his home in Germany.

Bernd was also a very active FM-DXer and built an impressive 8 x 9-element array for the 88-108 MHz band.

The DL7APV 8 x 9 Element Antenna Array for Band 2 (88-108 MHz)

One of my interests is listening for long distance radio signals on the 88 to 108 MHz band which is  otherwise known as Band 2 or as simply the FM band to the general public. I recently came across this impressive antenna array from Bernd, DL7APV in Germany.

He is using an array of eight bayed 9-element Band 2 beams mounted on a rotatable base which is normally used for moon bounce on the higher VHF & UHF bands.

According to DL7APV, the antenna array has an impressive gain about about 14 to 15 dBd with a beam width of about 10 degrees.

The individual antennas are the 9-element 3H-FM-9M19 - Modell 2019 from Antennenland which retail at €109 each.

Despite the fact that the antenna has 9 elements, a lot of them are used to make the antenna broadband. It seems to have the same gain as say a narrowband 4 to 5-element Yagi.

For more details on this array, how it goes together and what was heard, check out DL7APV's 3-metre page on his website.