Mike,
The Super Thunderbird is the TH-11DX and it was designed in the late 80's/early
90's by Roger Cox, WD0DGF, while he was at Telex HyGain in Lincoln, Nebraska.
He explained that the design was done on an early computer and the data was
sent by telephone to a computer in St. Louis, MO for processing. Antenna design
was fairly crude by today's standards.
The HyGain antenna line was purchased by MFJ in 1999. However, there have been
NO design changes to the antenna since it was first designed by Roger. In fact,
the current online manual that MFJ provides is an exact copy of my original
Telex HyGain assembly manual (except for the pages which have the MFJ contact
info.
My TH-11 was manufactured in late 1995 (the shipping carton says 6/95) and it
is an original Telex product. I purchased it unused from a Michigan ham in
2005. It sat unassembled in the box until November, 2011 when I finally got the
resources together to afford a crane and assembly team to remove my TH6DX from
my 80 foot tower and replace it with the TH11DX.
A close study of my original manual, and the current MFJ/HyGain manual
demonstrates that ALL of the antenna parts were taken from the TH6 and TH7 line
of antennas. The boom, traps, boom to element clamps, and most of the element
pieces are exactly the same! Only the wires connecting the driven elements and
the balun are different plus different element lengths and spacing. To my
knowledge, there is no NEC or EZNEC computer model available for the TH-11.
However, I can tell you that it is big and heavy, and the stated 12.5 sq. wind
area is a realistic figure.
Good luck with your project.
Dennis W0JX/8
Milan, OH
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