So many have replied and offered helpful suggestions. Thanks to all!
The overwhelming majority suggested getting the top loading wires
horizontal instead of sloping. Apparently the sloping wires cancel out
some of the radiation from the vertical. Several said to add a skirt
wire around the top loading wires.
Many people suggested *increasing* top loading using more wires or by
adding a loading coil closer to the top of the antenna and reducing or
eliminating the base loading inductor with its losses.
A variation of this answer is to change over to an inverted-L or a "T"
configuration.
One guy suggested feeding the antenna from the top, thanks Greg!
Another said to make the antenna fatter, perhaps with multiple parallel
wires.
Many said to improve the ground system as much as possible.
Some people said it was probably about as good as it will get for a
short antenna and suggested just running more power. To date I have
been running 100 watts output power.
Overall the suggestions have been very helpful and I really appreciate
the responses . I'm going to see if I can't get the top loading wires
closer to a horizontal orientation and then get rid of the shorted turns
in the loading coil and hopefully (with more top loading) make the
loading coil smaller. If this doesn't pan out then an inverted-L is
probably the next step.
Thanks again to everyone,
Chip, NW0O
_______________________________________________
Topband mailing list
Topband@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/topband
|