You should should be about to get and SWR of less than 1.7:1 with no
matching. Adding more radials will not help your problem. This is normally
a simple antenna and of if an SWR of 1:1 is desired you can use a simple
hairpin coil to match the impedance. You clearly have something wrong.
Perhaps your coax, a connector, your SWR meter is bad or maybe it has
something to do with your base being four feet off the ground. I have build
a number of 1/4 wl verticals using direct feed with great results, however
my base was just inches above the ground.
John KK9A
To: towertalk@contesting.com
Subject: [TowerTalk] 160m 1/4 Wave Vertical Results Thus Far...
From: AB5MM
Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2007 19:51:38 -0500
List-post: <mailto:towertalk@contesting.com>
Gentlemen,
I would like to extend a hardy "Thanks" to each of you that responded to
my plea for help with matching the 120'-6" 160m Rohn 25 Vertical. It's
still not working like I think it should, so let me tell you what we've
managed to accomplish to date.
1. We now have 40ea. 125' long ground radials installed. Another 20 will
be added this weekend for a total of 60. I think I'm going to say that's
enough for now. NOTE: Going from 22 to 40 ground radials made little
difference!
2. Both the MFJ-249 and MFJ-259B are virtually useless at these
frequencies. Too much rf from the BC band. This alone would have saved
us hours in trying various matching networks, not to mention the number
of "Pepcid Complete" ingested.
3. In sweeping the tower from 1.600 MHz to 2.500 MHz, we found it's
natural (no matching other than the 75' of LDF4-50A) resonance at 1.788
MHz. The lowest swr observed at this frequency was 2.6/1. At 1.800 it is
3.0/1 and slowly rising to 4.0/1 at 2.000 Mhz. Conventional wisdom tells
us that the thing is too long (tall). This still brings up the
question, "How can this be the case when the vertical is only 120 ft.-6
in. tall to begin with?" What are we missing here guys? The center of
the band (1.900 mhz) is what we've been shooting for all along.
4. A high pass "T" network brings the match down flat, but it's Q is
high enough to only realize a practical band width of ~33kc.
5. A low pass "L" network works as well and exhibits a little larger
band width of ~60 kc. Our goal is ~100 kc wide... is this reasonable?
We really don't know what to do or try next, if anything. Should we be
satisfied with what we have?
Press on, nothing is as persistent as persistence itself.
Tnx & 73,
Steve AB5MM
Lloyd K5ZO
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