At 01:00 AM 6/2/2007 -0700, you wrote:
Patrick, You just presented a real imponderable. By your standards, my piddling wi'l antenna is something you would tear down and burn. In the spirit of experimentation (which is what my callsign is supposed to be about), I wanted to access the far end of my former 65-foot long, 15 foot high longwire (orientation 135/315ยบ). It used to be 10 feet high, but to get it further away from a steel, chainlink fence (installed without complaints by my 34-year old son) that was totally messing up the gain of the antenna, I added (with a whole world of fuss, tears and frustration) extra five-foot steel mast sections to both end support masts. This got it an extra 5 feet + from the fence, and really helped the gain. But I wanted, as in older days, to terminate the far end in a resistor to make it "behave" better. Brainstorm. I took down the antenna and spliced a 14-foot vertical length at the far end and terminated the antenna at 1 foot from the ground with a little white "johnny ball" insulator. Did the same thing at the near end. Now I had a 93-foot (total) EWE antenna. From the moment I reconnected it to the receiver/antenna feedline, I observed a very great difference in the gain and directivity of the "new EWE." Also, terminating the far end directly to ground (a 8-foot rod), via a 470-ohm resistor, a 200-pF capacitor, a 200-uH coil and just "floating" the far end, changed the directivity greatly, in some instances. Moral of the story: a vertical length of antenna can and will profoundly affect the characteristics of a horizontal antenna. Charles A Taylor, WD4INP Greenville, North Carolina _______________________________________________ IRCA mailing list [email protected] http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: [email protected]
