I have a "Rube Goldberg" antenna on 160. I lost my tower last spring and
just cobbled together a short Rohn 25G tower and put a SteppIR 3 element
yagi at 45'. Clearly too short for 160M. So, I mounted a vacuum relay at
the top, attached the common to the thrust bearing plate, and ran 25' of #14
straight south and about 125' straight north. Two separate shunts feed the
tower on 80 and 160. The relay selects the hat for each band.
Last night, I was checking things out for the ARRL 160M contest. I had the
SteppIR antenna parked with the elements completely retracted. The L
antenna was behaving badly! The auto-tuner was whirring about looking for a
match. My hopes of playing this weekend were dashed. Then I remembered
that the SteppIR was parked. I pushed the 20M button on the controller.
The results were amazing.
Set to 20M, the tower loads perfect at 1805 or so. On 17M it dials in at
1825-1830. Press 15M and she goes up to about 1845. 10M gives me about
1860. This is a HOOT! A completely tunable hat on 160M! Auto-tuner will
be OFF this weekend. I'll tune the antenna instead.
Just an FYI.
Ford-N0FP
ford@cmgate.com
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