Dang - I've just realized that complexity is
evil! I'm gonna sell my C5 Corvette - I found
out it has 5 computers in it at the least! Progress sucks.
73,
Joe
WDØM
(4L SteppIR owner for almost 4 years and that puppy has never "pooched".)
At 04:17 PM 5/10/2007, Peter Dougherty wrote:
>I originally wanted to go with a 4-element SteppIR for aesthetics,
>but what convinced me ultimately had nothing to do with an antenna at
>all. It was CQWW-SSB a few years ago. Saturday night, 40m; the band
>was on fire and I had a good shot into Europe with 600W my dipole.
>All of a sudden my logging software froze, then the PC abruptly shut
>off. It took me four hours to repair the log and get the PC up and
>running again. Indeed, Mr. Murphy had come for a visit and brought
>all his luggage with him.
>
>I see the idea of having that kind of circuitry and mechanical
>complexity 70' up, where I can't service it myself, plus one extra
>cable run, is engraved invitation for Mr. Murphy to come back for a
>longer stay--of course, at the least opportune time.
>
>While I'm leery of the rivets giving way, from what I understand, if
>an element or two fails at a rivet, the antenna will still be sort-of
>usable, albeit with degraded performance. If a Stepper motor fails,
>the control line fails or worst of all, the berrylium-copper tape
>breaks, that's it...you're either QRT or stuck on one frequency (hope
>you weren't listening to something on shortwave broadcast at 16 MHz
>at the time it pooched out!).
>
>As Scotty said, the more complicated the plumbing, the easier it is
>to stop up the drain."
>
>Besides, try to tri-feed a SteppIR!
>
>Cheers,
>
>Peter,
>W2IRT
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