Paul,
You might get away with CW and SSB at higher power levels, but do not go
key-down at anything over 500w. In my case, the coax melted inside the
antenna. It was quite a bit of work to replace it. The damage was not
detectable by visually inspecting the coax. I had to do a binary search,
cutting the coax in half until I found the bad piece. It turned out be a
section about one inch long in which the dielectric had melted through the
sheild.
73, Dick WC1M
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dinsterdog@aol.com [mailto:Dinsterdog@aol.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, May 07, 2003 9:48 AM
> To: towertalk@contesting.com
> Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Gap and others
>
>
> Wow,
>
> I got a lot of response to my Gap question on noise and 80M.
>
> Now here's the rest of the story......
>
> I moved from my 160 acre ranch in Wyoming where we had a
> number of low band arrays etc........to a typical urban back
> yard in Denver. Being a low bander and 80 meter diehard, I
> set up my Hustler 6BTV and with it. With around 10 radials
> and my Alpha Amp,
> I had a fairly decent 80M season (of what was left of it)
> working several JA's, and even a RW station zone 19 LP at
> sunrise. That was a rush- All on days where the RF hash was
> tolerable. It's a lot better in the morning vs evening-
>
> Now I know how to DX on 80M using big antennas, and have had
> good success with smaller antennas like the HF2V and
> 6BTV....I don't waste my time on wire wonders, etc....
>
> But the noise level on the Hustler at the new QTH was a lot
> worse than expected. Ouch as you could hear a pin drop on it
> at my old QTH and both the HF2V and 6BTV did well DX'ing. At
> the new QTH, HF2V was no better on noise. Especaily trying to
> hear EU.
>
> To make things worse, my 3 year old kept getting tangled up
> in the radial field......what a mess I was running into
> trying to work the only band I'm serious about-
>
> In a totally desperate mode, and brain jammed with rose
> colored glasses and prescribed medications, I did try
> Martin's 1026 box but let's face the facts. This box
> requires a null antenna that can hear as well as what you are
> using taking up extra room in the yard. My 6 BTV was on one
> side of the yard, while my nulling HF2V on the other side
> Blah- The box had ok effects at first nulling out some noise
> but it also reduced signal strengths as well nulling them out
> too....it had poor RF protection and cooke d in a week. Good
> little toy if your are a SWL, but not for DX'ing in my experience-
>
> So how do I get the DX efficiency of a vertical yet hear with
> it too- Using receiving loops is a good idea, an excellent
> idea! But again, room is limited. And regardless of what
> vertical antenna I've tried, noise still sucks- (My guess is
> I'll still try some rx loops some day but..........)
>
> So here I am pondering whats the next step- In the mean time,
> I go out and get the new Cushcraft MA5V with it's center fed
> vertical dipole design. (I think thats how some explain it)-
>
> Guess what?!....it is quiter on rx vs the Hustler 6BTV on
> ALL band comparisons and works just as well. Hummmm......too
> bad you can't run any power with it and darn if they didn't
> build it for anything but the high bands-
>
> So looking around, I find that the Gap Titan is a center fed
> 1/2 wave vertical/dipole design or something to that effect.
> It's never clear to me but it seems like a good choice for a
> quiter RF antenna. That is their claim-
>
> So before ordering one, I go to my antenna test book but I'm
> not encouraged by what's stated for this antenna on 80M. Then
> I go to Eham and bingo, over 50 reviews and it people love
> it- A 9V who I've worked from Wyoming uses one and that's the
> icing on th e cake.
>
> So I order it and I'm almost done finishing up. Recent
> emails to me say it's a dummy load on 80M while others say it
> is not quieter than anything else they've tried. These
> emails are from people I know to be great low band ops but I
> remain encouraged-
>
> I'm looking forward to raising it up- Power limitations and all.
>
> BTW, I was told that the 500 watt limit applies to full duty
> cycle and that running legal is ok on CW, SSB, etc....myth or
> fact I'm about to find out-
>
> I like pushing antenna's to their limits and I'm watering at
> the mic to try this puppy out-
>
> Any other commenets about the Gap Titan or any other Gap for
> the low bands will be greatly appreciated. Good or bad, I
> just want to know. I've already used several suggestions in
> constructing the antenna found on the Eham review site and
> Gap has a great
> webpage......Please feel free to email me here or at
> dinsterdog@aol.com.
>
> I'll post my results in a few weeks once I have a chance to
> work some DX somewhere- I am using the capacitor for
> 3.500MHz but have ordered the cap for 3.800MHz for later comparisions-
>
> If you see any mushroom clouds over Denver, you know I pushed
> it a bit too much with the Alpha-
>
> 73 Paul N0AH
>
>
>
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