Is there any interest in repeating the studies? It's a huge amount of
work, but technology has advanced, both in antennas and in measurement
technique.
Seems to me that the big resource consumer is getting and assembling the
antennas (and then disassembling and shipping back to whoever
loaned/rented them). The thought of a multi week antenna assembly fest
makes my fingertips hurt to contemplate it.
With a bucket truck and suitable test site (which I might happen to have
available) the antenna raising/lowering would be pretty speedy. Maybe
you could do one antenna a day. (From sitting on the ground next to the
tower, hoisted up and mounted, spun for the measurements, then brought
down).
Maybe a temporary tower or a crane.. Now that I think about it, the
latter sounds attractive. You could put a rotator with a sort of
universal plate mount on the top (or in a 120 foot telescoping boom
lift), bring it to the ground, bolt the antenna on, raise it up.(the
bucket truck is controllable from the ground) No high work at all
(which is always slow). It's not all that expensive to rent a lift for
a week.
(or actually, we essentially have this on the antenna range at JPL..A
big boom that can erect and has a precision rotator on the end of it. We
use it for testing VHF and UHF antennas with a huge log periodic or horn
as the probe. I wonder if we could permission to use it?)
Jim, W6RMK
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