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Re: [TowerTalk] 80 meter antenna choice

To: towertalk@contesting.com
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] 80 meter antenna choice
From: john@kk9a.com
Date: Tue, 07 Jul 2020 10:42:44 -0500
List-post: <mailto:towertalk@contesting.com>
Nearly every high scoring contest station in the Caribbean uses an inverted V and it is a good choice. It is easy to be loud on 80m from zone 8. I have used an inverted V from the Caribbean many many times but I have also used a rotating dipole and a switchable sloper system. The shortened rotating dipole worked great however the constant tuning and switching in coils made changing frequencies a bit of work. The sloper system that I used was on an island mountain top and it worked amazingly well.


73,
John KK9A



K4XS wrote:

I've pretty well figured out what I will be doing on 40-6 meters. However, 80 is still undecided. Shunt feeding the tower is not going to work since I have all kinds of rotating antennas up the side of the tower. So, I'm left with three solutions. Since the last guy point is at 96 ft I could have two inverted Vees apexed at 96 feet down to around 60 ft on the ends, at right angles to each other. That would give me the ability to switch directions and gain/lose around 5-10 db. Second choice is to have a full size wire vertical with 60 full sized radials over average ground. Third choice is more complex- a wire 4 square but...although the SE and SW facing verticals would be pretty close to having a good radial system The NE facing one is pretty limited due to lot lines and the location of the house/garage and the NW facing antenna is even more limited by the same constraints. This one has a driveway in the way. Most of the decent sized radials would be pointing away from the direction the NE and NW are facing and the others would be fairly short. Of course laying down the radials for the 4 square is quite a chore and I would hate to go through all that work to come up with crappy system. Easiest of course, would be the inverted Vees. I've used this system in the past and it performed quite well. I'm concerned the lack of similar radial systems would ruin the F/B and gain and the compromised radial system of two of the antennas would also be an issue.
Your thoughts?
Bill KH7XS/K4XS  (soon to be V31XX)

Location of the station is V31 and interest is contesting and DXing

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