Hi John, The SteppIr housings are fiberglass and can be purchased seperately. (I picked someones spare up to play with at some point). They had a nice booth at Dayton where you could see the internal parts in action. It's a great idea for someone who wants an "all in one" neat package. I bought one of the yagis for that reason, and from all the positive comments made in the contest and DX circles.
As to radials, you can get away with a lot less length if you bury your radials just under the surface. Some efficiency is sacrificed, but even over poor soil (alas Tennessee falls into this category according to all the charts) you will get decent performance. My experience is with 80/160 and some 40M vertical work. On 80M, I used a 48' top loaded Tee wire vertical with twelve 30' radials just on top of the ground. Managed 90 countries in CQ WW CW with 100 watts, so don't let the 120 1/2 wave radial thing throw you for a loop... Cheers, Julius n2wn _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: [email protected] You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
