Very interesting. It is amazing what is in those manuals that I, like most people, never bother reading. Anyway, that's why I like the new Eznec with it's average gain! You can look to see if averag
I can't speak for the mechanical issues, other than I would question hanging too much weight on a cable because you either have to have a lot more slack in the span or have a lot more tension. I'd c
While it is nice to have an antenna that compliments the nulls of another antenna with a nice lobe, there are other worries. All my life I have used high yagi's, and never have noticed a problem. Wh
I'm delighted to see someone point out the real issue. The issue is the *design*. I have aluminum masts here that, if they were steel, you would never be able to work with them. They are as strong o
Why do you need a non-conductive mast? Why not just use a short length of PVC at the top of a regular mast? If it is really fussy, you would have to insulate the mast bottom but I doubt it is. That
That's good advice. While all the talk about patterns over perfect flat earth with no buildings is useful in that environment, we all don't live in the country on cattle farms or on golf courses. If
Hi Bill, Why use a DC blocked protector? The DC blocking will do next to nothing for lightning protection if it passes HF signals without a SWR bump. Lightning is a time-varying pulse, not DC. The DC
Hi Rick, Cone of silence lengths have little advantage for receiving S/N over other lengths, unless you happen to have noise that is concentrated in the null area. Odds are you will never know the di
You do not need a fiberglass mast. That antenna has a moderately low impedance. All you need is an ground-insulated mast (conduit is fine) with a short stub of PVC at the top to keep it away from th
I use my phased 800 foot long Beverages (three wide with 350 foot spacing) all the way up to 40 meters and higher. The reason they work when they are so long is the far ends don't carry any current
The old RCS-4 is unacceptable at 6 meters due to SWR and crosstalk. It has already been revised, and will be acceptable to 100MHz. The new unit should be out in a month or so, and now safely handles
Just use solid bare copper. There are hundreds of radio stations using radials from the 1920' and 1930's, and those radials are in good shape today. We dug some up at WSPD, they were installed in th
The consensus is absolutely wrong, and it is easy to prove they are wrong. Here's how you can use common sense to dispel rumor or folklore. 1.) 0.2dB loss is about 5% power loss. 2.) The conductor A
Why not just build a vertical Brad? While linear loading is generally not as efficient as lumped loading using properly designed inductors or a small capacitance hat/inductor combination, you'd almo
Most of these indoor manual switches are imports, and I suspect many are from the same manufacturer. The MFJ switches I looked at had a lightning protector with too low a rating. With a "typical" 15
As with the coax connectors, most of us can not measure the loss in a switch. If there is noticeable loss, and if you run more than a hundred watts or so, the switch will almost instantly become "hi
Not speaking of any vertical antenna in particular, but all vertical antennas in general we have to be careful! We can feed power into a short vertical dipole mounted near earth and it will have a l
I enjoyed your ground loss comments, and mostly agree with them. I'm not speaking of any antenna brand in particular, but only of system in general. there is no magic bullet. But here are some intere
My first coax switch was a plywood board nailed to the wall, with antenna coax cables coming in from above and hanging vertically. I soldered a heavy wire along the shields, and bent hooks in the cen
You should be insecure about the Hex beam. There is far too much hyperbole and far too few facts offered in the claims. 73, Tom W8JI W8JI@contesting.com _____________________________________________