For a month, Scott, NI8L, has been telling me
to get an antenna up on 160 for the contest.
We both recently moved to new QTH's, Scott's
in Ohio, mine on Cape Cod. At least Scott
has a 110 ft tower to put up an inverted-V.
My support is a 50 ft tree next to the house.
The plan was to go out and cut the coax going up to
the 80 meter inverted-v at 50 ft, haul out the
tuner, and add 4 raised radials. As the contest
neared, it became apparant that time would not
permit such a setup. Two days before, Scott
called to say his inverted-V was up. Scott was
loud, very loud, from his Ohio hilltop. I used
the tuner to load up the 80 meter V to go back to
him. In Scotts words, 'I sounded like a European'.
A couple years ago I had the same results using an
80 Meter dipole out in New York.
The next day a new antenna design came to me.
In the process of discussing different antennas
to put up on Scotts tower, one mentioned was the fed
radial system using the tower as the ground
(sort of a backwards fed vertical). It sounded
good in the article in June 94 QST by N4KG.
Why not do the same thing only use the 80 Meter
V as the ground and power up four radials. All
I had to do was cut the coax from the V, short the
conductors to the braid,and solder 4 radials to the
center conductor. My plan needed two barrel connectors
but I only had one. Ok, I'll just use my antenna
switch as the second barrel connector. Hey, the switch
already shorts unused antennas to ground, perfect! All
I have to do is solder the radials to the center of a
PL-259 and connect it up to one input and connect the V
to another. I could even switch between the two antennas.
I ended up only getting one radial out, headed west, 6
feet off the ground. All the pulling on the coax
dropped the 80 meter V to 37 feet (as I noticed the next
day). I still worked almost everything I heard. I mostly
S&P'd trying to see how loud I was in a mini pileup and
if I could work the weak ones.
The modified vertical performed well out to the Mississippi.
I heard but couldn't work CO, OR, NM, and SCV.
In all, I was amazed at its performance using just 1 raised
radial headed west and an 80 meter V as the ground. I still
needed the tuner but wonder if I had another day if I could
have trimmed the radial to resonance.
113 Q's , 35 Sections, 0 DX (none heard), 3 hours
I would appreciate any other scores or comments on performance
of a low dipole (especially an 80 meter dipole) running low
power. This antenna performed exceptionally compared to loading an
80 meter dipole and may be a possibility for others with low height
antennas.
Send any comments to me at WT1O@aol.com.
73, Bob
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