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Re: Topband: Suggestions for a tower?

To: topband@contesting.com
Subject: Re: Topband: Suggestions for a tower?
From: Jim Brown <jim@audiosystemsgroup.com>
Reply-to: jim@audiosystemsgroup.com
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2014 10:05:54 -0700
List-post: <topband@contesting.com">mailto:topband@contesting.com>
On 4/23/2014 5:15 AM, Jaan Jürgenson wrote:
I could think of isolating the guy wires or replace them for non-conductive
type. I'm not sure if it possible to isolate the base today. Shunt fed the
tower, use it as a folded monopole? Or should I just use the tower as a
support for a L-antenna?

Hi Jaan,

Certainly the tower without the guy wires would load and perform quite well, but it also needs a good radial system.

To load the tower, you would need to isolate those guy wires, and also break them up with egg insulators. That's a tricky thing to do safely with the tower already up in the air, and it means that you will have to REPLACE the existing guys, because they will not be long enough to terminate at each insulator. I would get advice from someone very experienced with tower work before attempting it.

Another way to use the tower effectively is as a support for a sloping vertical that is insulated from the tower at the top, and fed from the base, also with radials. The tower will act as a passive reflector, providing a few dB of gain in the direction of the slope. The tower also needs radials for this configuration. I have two sloping wires like this on my 120 ft tower, one going east, the other west. The feedpoints are roughly 18m from the tower.

You MIGHT get away with the sloping wires with the guys in place as they are -- I would certainly prepare and study an NEC model before trying it.

73, Jim K9YC





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