Hi all,
Just a question further to this topic from a couple of weeks ago. I
just put the L in service tonight. I have a 40-80-160 vee (apex at
65') up already, and it's an underachiever on receive to be sure,
hence my desire to try something different.
The L is about 55' high, and I pruned it for best SWR at 1830, about
1.3 or 1.4:1. I have eight 66' radials out so far; more will go down
over the next week. The radials are all facing the opposite direction
from the sloping part of the L (sloping part faces due east, 6 of the
8 radials go straight west). The L slopes up from 55 to 70' on its
support end. I don't have any matching network in place, and the SWR
is decent after a pruning session this morning.
Using my MFJ-259 analyzer at resonance, it shows a Resistance value
of 45 and a Capacitive reactance of 15.
Performance: the crappy old inverted V blows it out of the water, by
1 to 2 S-units on average, and the noise increase on the L is
positively huge (being a vertical, I suppose I should have been
expecting that). I won't be using this as a receive antenna once the
K9AY loop goes up, but I figured the L would still be better than the
vee, given how low the vee is overall. Nothing spotted from Europe
was receivable on the L, and as usual, just a faint whisper bordering
on ESP on the vee.
Any idea what could be wrong? Just not enough radial-wire down on the
ground, do you think? My soil is hard and extremely rocky, but no
idea how conductive it is, etc. I will get another 250' of wire out
tomorrow and probably 500' more on Monday, but before I invest
another $50-100 in radial wire, I'm now wondering if I'm expecting
too much from this thing?
73,
Peter,
W2IRT
_______________________________________________
Topband mailing list
Topband@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/topband
|