Topband
[Top] [All Lists]

Topband: "Is your feedline also an antenna?"

To: <topband@contesting.com>
Subject: Topband: "Is your feedline also an antenna?"
From: "MW Comercial" <mw_comercial@wp.pl>
Date: Mon, 3 Oct 2005 17:56:53 +0200
List-post: <mailto:topband@contesting.com>
Hello from Poland,

I've just put few Beverage's on my QTH and however they're working fine (I can 
hear DX signals that are completely absent on other antennas), I wonder if 
there is still sth I should do about my feedlines.

Last weekend I've done a test described in ON4UN's book - I shorted the coax 
center and shield at the bev. feed point (after disconnecting it from the 
antenna) and found that there are still some signals present on my receiver, 
even some of them are quite strong. That happens mostly on AM broadcast 
stations, but on 80/40m I can also hear a lot of signals... Well, in most of 
cases they're not moving S-meter at all, but they are there. John ON4UN says in 
his book that after such a test "..your receiver should be completely dead". 
So, mine is not.

By switching beetween the coaxes I found that the strenght of those signals 
does not depend on lenght of the feedline, but on the direction where it goes.

Few more details:
- the longest feedline is 140m long, the shortest 60m
- all feedlines are buried
- each coax's shield is grounded 15-20m away from the antenna feed point, the 
longest one is grounded every 40m; the main coax (between the external switcher 
and shack) is also grounded when it enters the house
- of course the equipment in the shack is grounded with an independent ground 
rod
- what is NOT grounded is the external remote switcher. I decided not to ground 
it, because it's placed very close to my K9AY and it's ground rod

I use separated primary and secondary windings in all xfmr's. After installing 
them I've noticed the noise level is S 1,5 down, and beverage's are generally 
silent, but as I've written before - still wondering if there is sth more to do 
regarding the feedlines. Is this really possible that a feedline is so silent 
like ON4UN says???

Best 73
Mac SP2XF

_______________________________________________
Topband mailing list
Topband@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/topband

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>