Jerry: My coax switching arrangement is identical to yours, i.e., the switch is at the tower and the coax runs enter through a steel box. I chose to install arrestors at each coax where it enters thi
Bill: I agree with you that a direct hit on an exposed conductor, such as a telephone line or coax cable, can be very dangerous, even if part of this conductor is underground. My neighborhood has all
Wilson: I don't have first-hand experience with Blaw-Knox towers but I am aware that they make broadcast towers that are very sturdy. FWIW. 73 de Gene Smar AD3F ______________________________________
Kip: In my field experience with side-mounting omni antennas, I typically ask for at least two WL away from the tower. This is easier to achieve with higher-freq sticks. If you can get this antenna f
Kip: Extending your LMR400 from 3 to 8 feet will result in an increase in loss at 2.5 GHz of about 0.3 dB. (See http://www.timesmicrowave.com/cgi-bin/calculate.pl for a calculator.) I doubt this will
Jeff: Given that you have a short (20 foot) length of coax between your tower and shack entrance, your installation is very similar to most commercial installations on towers. In those cases, the coa
Jim et al: Although the Bencher Skyhawk isn't resonant on 17 or 24 M it does load on those bands with a tuner. I have worked a fair share of folks on both bands with mine. However, I believe the dire
Gents: Fig. 5 in the URL is a good depiction of how only a few of the total elements are actually active on any one frequency. If one could run similar models for increasing frequencies across the de
Jim: Some earlier postings on this thread talked about slanted LPs in a stack. What they meant is the two LPs would be pointed up (the bottom one) and down (the top one) so that the front, shorter el
Gents: I neglected to comment in my previous post about a significant issue with LPs. The boom halves as well as the elements are all above RF ground. Scroll down a bit on http://www.tennadyne.com/as
Ed: Besides extending the length of the downhill guy, you might consider using an elevated guy anchor. This is a steel I-beam of appropriate dimensions embedded in enough concrete to resist overturni
Tony: Obviously you missed something when you were disconnecting appliances. It's not likely that the breaker itself is the source of noise. To find out, put your hand on the panel around the main br
VE9HF: I concur with Jim's recommendation of Trylon Titan towers. I constructed and installed mine in 2001. They are a sturdy, MEDIUM-DUTY (their web page says light duty, so Caveat Amateur) tower id
Eric: I would check out The RF Connection at www.therfc.com in Rockville, MD. Joel can help you answer your questions about which wire to use for which application, too. (Full disclosure: Joel and I
Dick: Loktite 247, the blue colored stuff, is supposed to release with mechanical pressure alone. Some other version(s) require heat - not very convenient to apply to the underside of a rotator plate
Mike: www.therfc.com . Disclaimer: Joel and I are members of PVRC. 73 de Gene Smar AD3F I picked up a couple rolls of LMR-500 on a whim. The presumption was that I could find connectors for it. It se
Daniel: I'm afraid I'm going to be contrary to your <no wood> requirement with my suggestion. When I was first licensed in the 60s, many QST and Pop Electronic articles on construcing quads suggested
Jim: I understand your confusion: Twice as long = 3 dB more loss, right? But the loss figures for coax is given in dB per 100 feet (or meters) at a given frequency. That is, if a particular coax has
Stuart: Don't forget to short the unused feed across its insulator at the loop apex or corner. 73 de Gene Smar AD3F _______________________________________________ ___________________________________
Charles: The numbers are used by tower manufacturers to tell us Hams how much antenna area a particular tower model can support at a given wind speed without failing. In the example you cited, that v