i read all the posts about how well capacity hats work so i decided to build one for my 8 foot whip. i used a SO-239 (UHF Female) back shell (UG-106/U) to attach it. i took a 9 inch pie pan and drilled a hole in the center and used the UG-106 to make the vertical to horizontal attachment. i put the pie pan at 6 feet up the whip. The solid capacity hat doesn't cause a drag problem because i don't walk very fast. (My XYL thinks i look like the guy who shrunk the kids, really nerdy, but hey, us nerds got us to the Moon, so far the geeks have only produced Pac Man). i tried it out on the QRP Fox ( K0FRP in GA, 1200 miles) on 20 meters last night. There was no difference in receive strength with and without the hat. i was using my KX1 with internal NiCad's and had a 13 foot drag wire counterpoise. The standard whip was running 1.9 SWR and 2.2W, the added cap hat had 1.4 SWR and 3W. Field strength went up 30% with the hat. Pretty significant improvement. In this case there is more improvement from matching the antenna (which allowed more power output from the Tx) than getting the current point higher in the antenna.
Paul w0rw/pm _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: Elecraft@mailman.qth.net 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
