Jerry,
> I'm considering shunt feeding of a 45 foot freestanding tower
> with a 3L SteppIR on top for 160 and 80. The SteppIR is NOT
> electrically connected; the tower IS grounded,,, each leg has
> a 32 feet of #4 solid copper with ground rods at 16 and 32 feet.
> The possibility of using the SteppIR as a tunable cap is
> interesting... has anyone tried this? If so, have you run
> full power thru it? Did you use a relay to connect the
> SteppIR?
There is a concern for the matching transformer/balun if you
operate the SteppIR with the elements (driven element) extended.
depending on the driven element length, tower height, etc. the
balun could be exposed to high voltages.
I did talk with Mike and Jim about grounding the parasitic
elements while we were at Dayton last year ... they both said
there would be no problem running a piece of strap copper from
the junction of the contacts in the parasitic element tuning
units to the nearest bolt holding the tuning units to the boom.
If the reflector and director were tied to ground, any voltage
stress should be removed from the balun/matching transformer.
73,
... Joe, K4IK
_______________________________________________
Topband mailing list
Topband@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/topband
|