On 11/21/2012 11:01 AM, Edward R Cole wrote:
A cheap version of this antenna is a 100w incandescent light bulb with a few feed of "lamp cord" with a PL-259 attached. If you can load it, it makes a cheap dummy load that leaks RF. What I used as a Novice in the 1960's. I actually made some 40m contacts with the "light bulb" antenna over several hundred miles with 75w from my DX-35.
Tom, N6BT, of Force12 fame, often concludes his presentations with a tour of his "Illuminator" antenna ... a light bulb in a porcelain socket mounted on a fence post and fed with a short piece of coax with a current choke at the lamp. He claims to have worked all continents with it. He then expanded it to a "phased array" with three bulbs arranged in a Vee, "for additional gain." :-)
While on the subject of "too good to be true" antennas, for many years, the US military used very large, physically impressive, HF log-periodic beams. The first one I saw was in 1963 on the roof of the WW2 hangar at Galena AFS in the northern interior of AK, for the MARS station. They had around 15 or so elements on a lattice boom, and I remember thinking, "Wow! That sucker should really radiate." A lot have disappeared [satellite comm?], but you'll occasionally see one at a Natl Guard armory. Basically, 3-30 MHz with low SWR.
I was truly disappointed when I discovered it offered maybe 3-4 dB gain on any given frequency. The tribander on the same roof for the ham station [KL7FBK] out-performed it by a significant margin.
73, Fred K6DGW ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[email protected] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
