Even if it doesn't seem logical, you should try it!
At C6ATA last year in the CQWWCW, my primary 80m antennas were a parasitic 2
ele array (35' high with top hats - i.e. converted 40m verticals) for
EU/US/JA and a dipole for Carib/SA.
The last night of the contest we converted the 160m vertical (55' high) to
single 80m vertical, primarily to do an A/B comparison to the parasitic
array. The model said the 2 ele short array had about equivalent gain to the
near full-size single, and they were close in real life.
For grins, we decided to drive both the 2 ele array with the single vertical
(with an Array Solutions Stack Match). Amazingly, EU signals came up 1-2
S-Units! I know this is far beyond any possible theoretical gain, but it
was a consistent 1-2 Sunits towards EU, and a null to the USA. It was
working just like a 2 ele in-phase array should work like.
Turns out the single element and 2 ele array were spaced a bit more than 1/2
wavelength on 80m, had near perfect broadside orientation to EU, and the
coax lines were very close in length. This was all coincidence, and we only
figured out that the spacing & feed line length happened to be correct after
the fact.
It pays to play!
Kenny K2KW
(and I set a new LP 80m World Record too)
_______________________________________________
Topband mailing list
Topband@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/topband
|