Personally, I use an 80 M loop - I like it especially for stateside contest
like Sweep or FD. Nice solid signal on 40M and 80M. It does much better
than the Titan. But the Titan is much less maintenance and I don't have to
put it up and rebuild it each year.
With two hurricanes, no guying and no maintenance work at all, the antenna
stays up, good SWR and I can make the occasional contact. Will I ever be
the big dog - nope. I had a much better station in the mid-west, but we all
make compromises,.
-----Original Message-----
From: Topband [mailto:topband-bounces@contesting.com] On Behalf Of Gary and
Kathleen Pearse
Sent: Wednesday, December 12, 2012 3:44 PM
To: topband List
Subject: Re: Topband: Fw: GAP VERTICAL QUESTION
FWIW, at one point on a 5 acre remote parcel I had a GAP Voyager, GAP Titan,
80/160 parallel Inv-L over 120/125' radials, a 160M Inv-V, a F-12 C-4SXL
beam at 54', and homemade vertical fan dipoles for 10-40M. Tall 70-85' trees
that later burned in a forest fire held up the wires.
The GAPS were just that...always at the bottom of the RF food chain. The
vertical dipoles were down in strength from the F-12 beam some, yet I heard
and worked everything the beam did when compared. They are a good
alternative to a vert on the same band if supports are available. I had
verts for 40 and 20 over a dense radial field (~60), but removed them when
the vertical dipoles prevailed.
The Inv-L worked all bands 10-160, with varying results depending on the
other antennas and signal direction/time of day. I fed it with both coax
plus RF chokes at both ends of the run, and twin-lead over the few years it
was up. It was a full size vert on 80 due to a second wire parallel to the
160 L fed at the same point.
The twin-lead fed Inv-V did the same for all bands, and had good gain on
10-40 off the ends. The Inv-L usually beat the Inv-V at the same height
(~80') on 80-160.
In my experience an Inv-L for 160 would be a good choice if one could only
have one wire. Tuning is critical for multi-band ops.
During this experiment I also had a 2-el horizontal loop for 80 at 55',
which was excellent for NVIS and out to ~2500 miles from KL7, and a 1000'
horizontal loop at 50-80', which was not worth the effort to build. Today,
only the 80 loop and F-12 beam remain at that location.
73, Gary NL7Y
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Topband reflector - topband@contesting.com
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Topband reflector - topband@contesting.com
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