Towertalk
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: [TowerTalk] vertical antenna feedpoint

To: towertalk@contesting.com
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] vertical antenna feedpoint
From: Jim Brown <jim@audiosystemsgroup.com>
Reply-to: jim@audiosystemsgroup.com
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2025 20:23:49 -0700
List-post: <mailto:towertalk@contesting.com>
On 3/15/2025 6:19 PM, Tom Hellem wrote:
You got it. The extra 35 ohms is all loss resistance, heating up the worms.
Add radials.

There's a lot about radial systems in this slide pdf for talks I've done at Pacificon, Visalia, and to several ham clubs, including a lot of ways to implement radials or a counterpoise.

http://k9yc.com/160MPacificon.pdf

Once you've got a decent radial system, modeling software like NEC can be used to design a simple way to match it to 50 or 75 ohm coax. The concept is to increase the length of the antenna to move its resonance down in frequency far enough that the resistive component of the feedpoint impedance is 50 ohms, which makes it look inductive, which can then be tuned out with a suitable capacitor. "Suitable" is this case means of a type that has very low equivalent series resistance and a sufficiently high voltage rating for the power you want to run. I simply added enough length to the horizontal top of my 160M Tee to resonate it down in the top portion of the AM broadcast band. I think I ended up with capacitance in the range of 800-900 pF.

73, Jim K9YC



_______________________________________________



_______________________________________________
TowerTalk mailing list
TowerTalk@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/towertalk

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