Towertalk
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: [TowerTalk] 4 square for 80

To: RT Clay <rt_clay@bellsouth.net>, "towertalk@contesting.com" <towertalk@contesting.com>
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] 4 square for 80
From: Rudy Bakalov via TowerTalk <towertalk@contesting.com>
Reply-to: Rudy Bakalov <r_bakalov@yahoo.com>
Date: Sat, 24 Sep 2016 00:47:06 +0000 (UTC)
List-post: <towertalk@contesting.com">mailto:towertalk@contesting.com>
Hi Tor,
This is very informative.
Quick question- why did you chose the to wire of your L to slope toward the 
tower instead of away, sloping towards the ground? Would you reduce the impact 
of the tower in the middle by pulling the top wires away from the tower?

Rudy N2WQ      From: RT Clay <rt_clay@bellsouth.net>
 To: "towertalk@contesting.com" <towertalk@contesting.com> 
 Sent: Friday, September 23, 2016 2:15 PM
 Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] 4 square for 80
   
Interesting comments re 4-squares. I currently have up a "wire compromise in 
the woods" 4 square for 80 that seems to work quite well. Here's what I have 
done:


In the center of the 4-square is a 69 foot R25 tower with non-conducting guys. 
On the tower are two 15m yagis and a 6m yagi. My 4-square verticals are wires. 
They go vertical for 48 feet and then head towards the top of the tower- like 
inverted L's, except the horizontal part of the L slopes upwards. There are 
ropes tied out to trees to keep them up. Radials are on the ground. I use a 
Comtek hybrid coupler.

I detuned the tower by dropping a wire from about 20 feet up on a sidearm. This 
loop is tuned to resonance with a capacitor. I see about a 1 ohm difference in 
the resistive part of each vertical's Z with the detuning in vs. out. 


As far as performance, the 4-square is always better than a dipole (nearly 
flat) at 90 feet for dx stations. For the USA west coast the 4 square is also 
quite a bit better than the dipole (the dipole favors NE/SW). Even for working 
W1 from my qth (MS) I often use the 4-square.


Various comments:

The reason I chose inverted-L-like elements was that they are easy to make 
exactly identical, and I get the maximum height possible. With this geometry, 
the pull-out ropes going to trees don't have to all be at the same height.

In my opinion, if you are height limited, you want to stay away from elevated 
radials. If you elevate your radials, you are giving up valuable vertical 
distance which will further lower the feedpoint Z and increase ground losses.


I don't think the advice to model the central tower is very helpful. Modeling 
the typical tower is nearly impossible. Just getting the effective diameter of 
a triangular tower is nontrivial. Plus add stacked yagis, 
insulated/noninsulated yagi elements on top, etc. Just plan on detuning anyway.


I thought that the hybrid-type controllers (at least the Comtek I have) were 
really meant to work at 50 ohms. Then for a fullsize vertical, 36 ohms + some 
ground loss is not too far from 50. Obviously they seem to work ok over a 
reasonable range.

Tor
N4OGW
_______________________________________________



_______________________________________________
TowerTalk mailing list
TowerTalk@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/towertalk


   
_______________________________________________



_______________________________________________
TowerTalk mailing list
TowerTalk@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/towertalk

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>