Greetings everyone. . . I received several responses to my email regarding installation of lightning protection on my 160 meter four square. Several people suggested I put a Polyphaser on the coax ou
Dave, The Polyphaser lightning arrestors are not just a capacitor. It is not a big capacitor. On the antenna side is a gas discharge tube to ground and it has a series capacitor to the equipment. Th
According to my calculations at 2 MHz: If the capacitor in series with the line inside the Polyphasor was .01 uf it would have a reactance of 8 ohms and the phase shift would be 9.15 degrees. If it w
Hello Rick: I opened a Polyphaser IS-50UX-C0 and it had 2 small disk ceramic capacitors in parallel. I couldn't read the values by sight so I measured the value. It was 0.02 mfd. So each capacitor w
I did a quick EZNEC model and adding -4 Ohms reactance (.02 ufd)at the feedpoint of the verticals showed no change in F/B ratio. I would also add a robust spark gap and an RF choke to act as a static
Ok we have agreement all around. Thanks Price for the data. Now we know we have .02 in series with 50 ohms, so that is about 4 ohms of reactance and 4 ohms in series with 50 ohms results in a phase s
Don't forget that it's the relative phase between the elements that determines the pattern. Adding a small reactance to the feedpoint of each element should not change the relative phase between the
Adding 5 ohms reactance to the 160 meter 4-square elements is just like tuning down frequency about 20kHz from a verticals resonance. They have about 5 ohms reactance of their own then. Adding the ar
Hi all, Sounds like you're on the right track to determine the possible effect of adding series capacitors on the relative phase and amplitudes of the currents in a four square array. The feed point
The series capacitor exists in the Polyphaser box to allow static voltage to climb high enough to trigger the gas discharge tube if there is a DC ground in the receiver. Many receivers have an input
Jim, The gas discharge tube is at the antenna input to ground. The capacitor has nothing to do with when the gas tube will fire. As I stated before, PolyPhaser has a very good handbook on lightning
like tuning down frequency about 20kHz from a verticals resonance. They have about 5 ohms reactance of their own then. Adding the arrestors to each element is like moving the resonant frequency up ab