Hi Paul: Personally, I feel anything that helps a Ten Tec owner belongs on the
list. My loop, ex-loop rather, at first was fed with 450 ohm ladder line
through a Johnson "Kilowatt Matchbox." Later I compacted the shack so I only
have two antenna tuners, so I changed to the Ten Tec 238 through a 4:1 high
power balun mounted on the tower to the ladder line. I tried Amidon's 9:1 and
12:1 baluns with noticibly poorer results.
Ground, or sometimes the lack of it, does have a substantial impact. Mine on
this hill is an inch or two of poor quality "soil" over many feet of pure clay.
It takes a day or so to dry out, meaning I have to reset the tuners on 80 and
40 every time it rains, and then a day or two after. A local agronomist says it
probably takes 100 years for water to percolate from the surface to the
underlying water table - so for all intents and purposes it really is
"impermiable clay." In any event, it does not make a very satisfactory
reflective surface for RF.
One of these years I hope to make a trip to Colorado, sit on a mountain, and
see what difference a few thousand feet of rock underfoot makes in how antennas
work. And maybe see if a creek I used to know still has a few nuggets left.
Metal detectors are much more advanced than they used to be!
73 Pete Allen AC5E
_______________________________________________
TenTec mailing list
TenTec@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/tentec
|