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Re: [TowerTalk] book Tribander comparison test

To: towertalk@contesting.com
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] book Tribander comparison test
From: Jim Brown <jim@audiosystemsgroup.com>
Reply-to: jim@audiosystemsgroup.com
Date: Tue, 01 Mar 2011 17:24:26 -0800
List-post: <towertalk@contesting.com">mailto:towertalk@contesting.com>
On 3/1/2011 5:04 PM, Barry Kirkwood wrote:
> Are you telling us that yagi element spacing has no effect on front to back
> ratio?

I don't think anyone has implied that. But it is quite instructive to 
study a decent text like the ARRL Antenna Book, and also to spend some 
serious time with good antenna modeling software (like YW, that comes 
with the ARRL Antenna Book), trying variations on a design for any given 
band. Once you do that, you realize that there are quite a few variables 
that can be optimized for various criteria, depending upon what is most 
important to YOU.  Putting it another way, it is possible to build 
antennas with very good performance with a lot of elements, a few 
elements, wide spacing, narrow spacing, and so on. For narrow spacings 
the optimum lengths will be different that for wider spacing. A design 
may be optimized for low SWR over wide bandwidth while sacrificing gain, 
gain may be sacrificed for F/B, gain can be maximized while sacrificing 
bandwidth of the gain, and so on.

What SteppIR does is pick a single spacing for which they can build an 
antenna that can be maximized for gain (and a good match) at every 
frequency. That means they don't have to sacrifice gain to get 
bandwidth!  Yes, it costs more, yes there are more things to fail. But 
it can be built with much less weight and wind loading than other 
designs that produce equivalent results.

BTW -- any other way to design a multiband antenna can get VERY messy. 
If you're not careful, the elements for one band can affect performance 
on other bands.

73, Jim K9YC




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