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Re: [TowerTalk] Fwd: Change in Frequency As Antenna Height

To: towertalk@contesting.com
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Fwd: Change in Frequency As Antenna Height
From: Jim Brown <jim@audiosystemsgroup.com>
Reply-to: jim@audiosystemsgroup.com
Date: Thu, 2 Jun 2016 10:27:34 -0700
List-post: <towertalk@contesting.com">mailto:towertalk@contesting.com>
On Thu,6/2/2016 10:08 AM, Jim Thomson wrote:
But I dont know if scaling or extrapolating the 10M data is valid.

Gee, we've only been building and testing scaled models to help us understand and predict complex systems for 100 years, in fields I'm familiar with as widely varied as antennas and room acoustics. Maybe YOU don't know, but those who have taken the time to study do.

The degree to which scaling works depends strongly on how elements of the model accurately describe conditions at the scaled frequency -- in room acoustics, it's things like the reflections and diffusion characteristics of the wall materials, the attenuation of air, etc.; with this particular antenna example, it's the difference between how soil acts at 7 MHz as compared to at 30 MHz, and the diameter of the antenna conductors as a fraction of a wavelength.

BTW -- there are other parallels of folks using a single (and often inappropriate) variable to describe a system. With acoustics, it's Reverb Time, RT60, the time it takes sound to decay by 60 dB in a closed space; with audio, it's "frequency response," with cars it's "zero to 60," and with antennas, it's SWR. Paraphrasing the late Dick Heyser (another JPL scientist whose hobby was audio and who revolutionized audio with his teaching and his invention of Time Delay Spectrometry), "trying to describe the performance of an audio system using only its frequency response is like trying to write poetry with only one word in your vocabulary."

73, Jim K9YC

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