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[TowerTalk] Hornet

To: <towertalk@contesting.com>
Subject: [TowerTalk] Hornet
From: thompson@mindspring.com (David L. Thompson)
Date: Wed, 7 Nov 2001 01:05:55 -0500
I remember the Hornet beams as I had a TB-4H (also called the TB-1000-4).
Hornet (Oklahoma) did make an earlier series with a TB-500 and TB-750 but
not sure about the egg beater loops.  I do recall Hy-Gain made early
tri-banders with egg beater loops as one ham had the
3 el tri-bander with loops that were fairly long. K5IIN had separate
10/15/20 3 el Hy-Gains all with egg beaters in 1959.  The Hy-gains ads said
they broadened the coverage and added stability to the antenna in windy
environments.

Hornet sold out to Swan in the late 1960's and the bigger antennas were sold
for about a decade.

Telrex also used egg beater ends on their line of monarch antennas for a
while.  I don't recall Gotham building an antenna with egg beaters but they
did try to build just about everything else.  A local had the 3 el 15 meter
beam and the boom was so soft that you could bend it standing on it.   We
got him to switch to a better boom and the beam played well.  The longest
boom Gotham sold was 20 feet and they crammed the 4 el 20 and multi element
10 and 15 onto this boom.   One other manufacturer that used egg beaters was
the W4GL series of driven beams out of the Miami area circa 1955-1958.   The
W4GL beam was my other choice when we bought the Gonset Tri-Bander (their
ads spoke of no coils and showed Ohms picture).

Most of these beams were not optimum by todays standards (before W2PV and
optimizing programs).  Only Telrex had a test field to graph the patterns
and check front to back.  Most of the rest just put some tubing together on
a boom (and added tuned traps) and hoped for the best!

73 Dave K4JRB



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