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Re: [TowerTalk] Modeling question - for the experts!

To: towertalk@contesting.com
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Modeling question - for the experts!
From: Jim Brown <jim@audiosystemsgroup.com>
Reply-to: jim@audiosystemsgroup.com
Date: Thu, 2 Jun 2016 15:56:21 -0700
List-post: <towertalk@contesting.com">mailto:towertalk@contesting.com>
On Thu,6/2/2016 10:32 AM, StellarCAT wrote:
But here we have the real world actual situation where someone measures a 40 meter antenna and finds it to have an SWR on 15 of 1.2:1 - THAT antenna WILL interact I'm sure

Why do you come to that conclusion, Gary? It's perfectly normal for a half-wave dipole resonant near the low end of 40M to also be resonant on 15M, which is its third harmonic! That alone does not imply interaction.

Other factors that affect interaction are things like SPACING, and orientation relative to each other.

It also matters how the "interfering" antenna is terminated at operating frequency of the frequency of the primary antenna. That 40M antenna has a feedline, it has some length, and there's some sort of termination at the other end. It can be anything from an open to a short AT THE OPERATING FREQUENCY OF THE PRIMARY ANTENNA, and the length of the line will transform it to some complex Z at the antenna feedpoint. (CAPS added for emphasis).

Here's a simple example that took me several months to work out details for and use in a productive way. I have a Tee vertical for 160M (resonant) with radials on the ground. 200 ft away, I have a 120 ft tower with a 10 ft piece of 4-in PVC at the top that holds the top of two wires that slope away from the tower in opposite directions, one to the east, one to the west. Those wires are resonant on 160M, and I feed them from their base against four radials elevated about 20 ft. The tower, grounded with radials) acts as a passive reflector for the sloping wires, giving them 2-3 dB of gain in the direction of the slope. No surprise there. But the Tee vertical, if I short the base, also acts as a passive reflector for the sloping wires, moving their main lobes north by about 45 degrees (toward EU for the east wire, toward JA for the west wire). In addition, shorting the sloping wires at the feedpoint makes them also act as passive reflectors for the Tee vertical, giving me something like 4 dB of gain (in combination with the tower) to the south.

I do that switching in the shack, by leaving the coax to the antennas I'm not feeding short circuit, and controlling the length of the feed to each of them so that it looks like a short at the feedpoint.

How well does this match the model? I can clearly hear the predicted directivity when I switch between the three antennas.

73, Jim K9YC

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