The great Arctic King is built right on the edge of the sea.

This accounts for his extremely strong signal and low angle of radiation towards more than half of the horizon.

In addition, the salt water impregnates the ground around the King and ensures excellent ground conductivity and very low ground losses.

I would like to clarify that the Arctic King is only used for transmitting – I receive with an array of Beverage antennas ranging from 170 meters to 400 meters long in various directions.

I would also like to clarify that the downward angles of the top radial wires and the in-land angle as well, were dictated by the shape of the small peninsula that the Arctic King is built on and on the availability of large wooden poles.

Slightly better performance would have resulted if it had been possible to have the top radials horizontal and in-line.

Such poles are not easy to come by in Iceland, in fact the King – the 27m pole – is the largest pole in Iceland.

The Beverage antenna pointing towards Japan is the shortest Beverage in my arsenal – 170 meters long.

I intend to build a larger Beverage towards Japan to decrease the beam width and reduce the noise level even further.

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Initial testing indicated a problem with the King.   My Emtron DX-3 amplifier would fault above a power level of approximately 700W.

I fired up the Harris KW amplifier and was able to determine that there was a problem.

Inspection of the feedpoint box showed that the antenna wires had made near contact with the control wires and there had been a small fire inside the box.

I dressed all leads and replaced coax jumpers to the box and between the isolation transfomer and the  UNUN transformer for good measure, with freshly made new cable.

I sealed the feedpoint box for the winter and now everything works properly.

I think conditions are poor now, even so the Arctic King provided me with 70 QSOs to Japan and one QSO to Australia on the first day of operation.

I am amazed to put it mildly.

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The Arctic King – 160 meter transmit antenna

The Arctic King is finally built.

The project has taken more or less two years, it has consumed an incredible amount of heavy duty hardware and an enormous amount of hard work.

I enjoyed some assistance from my neighbors Finnbjörn and his brother Jón from Litlaeyri.

The antenna is designed by Villi, TF3DX and it will eventually work on both 160 and 80 meters and it will be possible to switch between vertical and dipole modes, which will give a choice of low and high angles of radiation.

Testing of the antenna will now begin, I have no doubts that the antenna will give me a strong signal on Top Band.

The efficiency of the antenna is in the vicinity of 75%, with 1.5 ohms in ground losses, this will later be confirmed  when final measurements have been carried out.

Note: Measurements have been made which confirmed this.

Due to the Salt Water propagation path for more than 180° and the closeness of the sea, the radiation angle is extremely low, this should help with very long distance contacts.

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