The casual antenna nut considering a parasitic vertical array will need
to pay very close attention to the comment on having a VERY SERIOUS
ground radial system on all elements.
73/jeff/ac0c
alpha-charlie-zero-charlie
www.ac0c.com
On 3/24/22 11:55 AM, Stan Stockton wrote:
Different people have differing views on the definition of a serious antenna.
An 8 circle with 8 directions of BSEF verticals would definitely be serious.
If you wanted one tower and didn’t want to do the work to install a minimum of
100 radials or more I would consider one tall tower with elevated radials. The best
antenna I ever had in Arkansas was 192 feet of 25G which I put up in 1980. This tower
was shunt fed with the feed point at 60 feet and had 9 radials (3 per leg) taking up
several acres with the ends pretty high.
Nobody had a four square back then so competition was not as great, but it was
a great performer. I think it was better than most serious antennas at the
time which would be quarter wave verticals with extensive, on ground, radial
systems.
That antenna for transmit and a half dozen thousand foot Beverages would be a
serious 160m setup even today.
73… Stan, K5GO
Sent from my iPhone
On Mar 24, 2022, at 10:34 AM, w5zn@w5zn.org wrote:
Hi Dino,
I started with a single 1/4 wave vertical as Tree notes and it worked extremely well for
years, however after a period of time I had a desire to upgrade the single vertical to a
system that offered some gain on TX. I came across the array that Tim, K3LR, mentioned in
"Low Band DX'ing" that describes his systems and discovered I could build this
array around the existing 1/4 wave vertical and achieve 4-square performance in a smaller
footprint area. I have now used the array for four years and the performance has been
outstanding. After reading the info regarding this array in Low Band DX'ing I documented
some additional details of my experience that were presented at the Dayton Antenna Forum
and also published in the National Contest Journal. Copies of those documents can be
found here:
https://www.kkn.net/dayton2018/2018_Dayton_Antenna_Forum-160_meter_TX_Array.pdf
https://ncjweb.com/features/sepoct18feat.pdf
As Tree notes, the very first step is to determine exactly what your objective
is. The five element parasitic array has met my objectives for both contest and
DX activities.
73 Joel W5ZN
On 2022-03-23 22:38, Dino Darling wrote:
If you may and you are willing to indulge me; if you were about to buy
5-acres with no neighbors or restrictions and wanted to erect a
serious 160M antenna system, what would you build and why? We can pass
on the Radio Arcala discussion; nobody's that cool.
A loaded 4-square? 1/4 wave stick (or longer)? Phased dipoles? (fill
in the blank)?
I've seen a 200' tower with three phased dipoles tilted on end. The
end of one side of the dipole was anchored and insulated at the top of
the tower and came down like guy cables. About half way down was the
feedpoint, were an isolated anchor cable continued down the same path
to ground (like a guy cable). However, the second half of the dipole
was pulled back to the base of the tower, from the center feedpoint
insulator. It looked like an arrowboard chevron or a regular dipole
that was turned 90 degrees on its side. The coax was horizontal back
to the tower. There were three of these spaced 120 degrees apart and
fed with a phasing network to steer it. I understand it works great.
So what would you build?
Dino - KX6D
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