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Re: Topband: 160 Tower on 80

To: Glenn Biggerstaff <ww4b73@gmail.com>, topband@contesting.com
Subject: Re: Topband: 160 Tower on 80
From: "Richard (Rick) Karlquist" <richard@karlquist.com>
Date: Sat, 28 Feb 2015 20:14:49 -0800
List-post: <topband@contesting.com">mailto:topband@contesting.com>
On 2/28/2015 5:15 PM, Glenn Biggerstaff wrote:
Hi all, I have a 90 foot Rohn 25 tower with an insulated base and insulated guy 
wire sections for top loading ,base fed for 160 meters. It work great ,but I 
would like to use it on 80 meters as well.
The 3 ideas I have considered are voltage feed  at the base  with a resonant LC 
network  at the base, but I am a little worried about the voltages present at 
legal limit power. Second idea,disconnect the top loading and put a trap 
between the top loading and the tower to divorce the top loading on eighty then 
an L network at the base for 80. Third idea, run a wire as a sloper either a 
quarter wave fed against ground or a 1/2 wave dipole from the tower.
Any thoughts or alternative ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Glenn WW4B
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I have a 90 foot top loaded vertical made from irrigation
pipe instead of R25.  Should be similar electrically.
I have done the voltage feed method on 80 with it, and
it works perfectly.  You just have to have the HV components
and be comfortable with designing a simple matching
network.  If you were using tuned elevated radials on
160, this would make sense because it would relieve
you of having to have a set of 80 meter radials.

If you have normal ground radials like me, you might
want to consider a relay to switch out the top loading
wires.  I currently have an insulated joint at the
60 foot point on my vertical with a relay across it.
When the relay is open, I have a 1/4 wave 80 meter
vertical.  In your case, you would have a 3/8 wave
80 meter vertical, that you could tune to resonance
with a series capacitor.

For details on the relay, see my H&K article:

May 2009 - QST (Pg. 66)
Increasing Relay Voltage Handling Capacity

You should put a string of 10 meg resistors
across the relay to drain static charge.

Rick N6RK
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