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Re: Topband: 160 sloper readings

To: Topband@contesting.com
Subject: Re: Topband: 160 sloper readings
From: "Gary Smith" <Gary@ka1j.com>
Reply-to: Gary@ka1j.com
Date: Sun, 19 Aug 2018 00:05:00 -0400
List-post: <mailto:topband@contesting.com>
Hi Guy,

No tower here, can't have one. The 
antennas are all wire on or hanging from 
trees. The radials are in a forest, not 
anywhere I can leafblow them. 1/2 of the 
radials are in a tick infested marsh, the 
other 1/2 are on the tick infested 
bog/woods next to the marsh. I am 15 miles 
from Lyme, CT where Lyme disease was first 
noticed. Ground Zero for tick issues in 
New England... 

The 160 antenna used to be an inverted-L 
but that tree came down so now I use a 
spud gun to get the 160 on top of the 
nearest tall trees from the radial bed & 
it's right on the marsh line. I can't do 
another antenna, this one took a few years 
to construct & that when I had both legs, 
I'm now working with a prosthetic leg and 
going back into the bog isn't in the cards 
anymore unless my life depended on it.

I used silver solder to solder the radials 
to the ring terminals which bolt to the 
radial plate, I used penatrox on each 
connection. Looking at the solder joints 
today they look essentially the same as 
when they were new. 

There is no place to run a new radial bed, 
AMTRAK is 75' from my property and as it 
is, the ends of my radials are 40' from 
AMTRAK, I can't move closer to the house 
or the radials will be under my Rx 
antennas. The Rx antenna is next to my 
neighbor's property.

So... I have to deal with what I have and 
feel lucky to have what I've got. Short of 
buying another house and relocating, this 
is what I have to work with. 

I can't see anything antenna-wise that has 
fallen apart or suffered the ravages of 
time or salt water and I do see here & 
there some radials that are exposed and 
they all look to be intact, not 
chewed/dislodged. I made over 500 Q's on 
160 running QRP in a contest earlier this 
year but with the apparent issues in 
resistance, I must have some issue sucking 
my signal.

I just read a couple replies saying the 
MFJ 259B has issues on 160, it is old and 
it's definitely not state of the art. I 
remember being happy that I was getting a 
resonant SWR on 160 so something has 
changed. I'm changing the flexible coax to 
LMR-400 Ultra, the 7/8 hardline looks to 
read as deal with a dummy at the end. 

I'm out of guesses although maybe the 
leaves are an issue as you mentioned. All 
the radials have insulation on them and 
all the other bands seem to be working as 
expected, it's just 160 that has these 
issues.

Always something...

And thank you for the informative reply, I 
appreciate it.

Gary
KA1J



> Hi, Gary.
> 
> It is not clear from your description exactly how the "sloper" is fed,
> where the radials are in relation to the tower, etc.
> 
> Quite a few things could be responsible for a change like that.
> 
> Not clearing the leaves off the ground over the radials will gradually
> bury them and result in a slowly increasing feed R and loss.  Clearing
> the ground through each leaf fall period with a leaf blower usually
> clears that up. You will note that in areas subject to seasonal
> falling leaves, AM broadcast antennas have huge nicely mowed lawns
> over their radials, and trees have been removed from the radial field.
> That is not without cause or entirely for appearances. Buried bare
> radials will behave differently over time than insulated radials laid
> on top of the ground.
> 
> The tower and all the wires running up it are HARD-coupled to the
> sloper. It is possible to have more RF current in the tower and its
> cabling than in the sloper wire. It is possible for the tower and its
> cabling to be the major radiator/dissipator of the tower/sloper
> *system*.
> 
> Adding or removing cables on the tower, or changing the terminations
> of conductors, if they are not all bonded (or capacitor-RF-bypassed)
> to tower at top and bottom, will change the feed measurements. Exactly
> how the measurement changes, and how much it changes, depends on
> environment and grounding/blocking on those conductors.
> 
> Adding/changing/removing yagi's, etc near the top of the tower will
> change the "parasitic element" behavior of the tower as seen by the
> sloper.
> 
> Particularly if the ground is poor, simply having a rainy summer can
> change the feed Z of the sloper.
> 
> Deterioration of the radial conductors can raise the feed Z of the
> sloper.
> 
> Installing a new antenna/feedline or tower within a half-wavelength
> radius or so can alter the feed Z of the sloper.
> 
> Folks often throw up a wire from a brief description of an antenna,
> and are happy if they can work QSO's. Considering how often time and
> funds for ham projects are simply not available, I can hardly argue
> with this, and I won't, having done the same myself, quite for cause.
> I will note that getting on the air on 160 is one thing, and worrying
> about the characteristics of a thinly engineered antenna, and that
> over most of a decade, is quite another.
> 
> The "time-lapse engineering" of the antenna may not have been
> considered at erection time, and deterioration may have started the
> day after the antenna's erection. It is unusual for a ham to have an
> academic grade recording of frequency sweeps and various measurements
> taken at routine intervals, along with dated notation of changes made
> to the antenna farm. It's not like a pilot's log or aircraft
> maintenance log which is required by law, and punishable if omitted.
> Almost *nobody* has this data, making explaining
> over-the-years-changes really difficult.
> 
> Allowing leaves to accumulate may be highly preferable from an
> appearance or maintenance effort standpoint, but will gradually
> deteriorate TX antenna performance. This is an annual problem for
> those with BOGs in the woods. After two years, the bottom layer of
> leaves will have completely decomposed into soil or proto-soil,
> effectively burying the radial wires deeper. Six or seven years is
> worth half the years in inches further buried. This softer more
> permeable, sponge-like new layer will get criss-crossed with the
> grateful roots of anything growing in the woods. At the same time this
> adds more dielectric material inside the ad-hoc capacitor that is the
> sloper wire vs radials. If not increasing loss, the additional
> dielectric material has at minimum increased the feedline shunting
> capacitance of this ad-hoc capacitor, dropping the resonant frequency.
> 
> Given everything above, it's not at all unusual that you would have
> experienced changes. Rather more it was guaranteed that you would
> experience changes. One of the blessings of elevated radials or an FCP
> is the 8 foot separation between constantly changing lossy ground and
> the system consisting of bottom of the vertical wire plus
> counterpoise.
> 
> You may want to revisit the choice of 160 antenna.
> 
> 73 and good luck,
> Guy K2AV
> 
> 
> 
> On Sat, Aug 18, 2018 at 7:17 PM Gary Smith <Gary@ka1j.com> wrote:
> 
> > Folks,
> >
> > I'm starting to get ready for the upcoming
> > winter frolics on 160. The 160 antenna is
> > a sloper and I have somewhere around 50 or
> > so 130' radials pretty much buried under
> > 6-7 years of leaves. When I went to the
> > remote coax switch & checked the readings
> > on the sloper with 10' of coax, I found
> > some readings with the old MFJ-259B that
> > concerns me.
> >
> > I thought I'd cut the Sloper at 129' long
> > for best SWR at 1.825 but I'm now reading
> > the lowest SWR at 1.737 MHz and the
> > impedance read 85. Going back to the shack
> > I read the antenna (with 360' of 7/8 50
> > ohm commscope now in-between), and the
> > resistance drops to 55 but the SWR still
> > reads lowest around 1.737
> >
> > It appears I need to shorten my antenna,
> > I'll have to work out the proper length
> > again but my concern is why at the feed
> > point would I see 85 for the resistance at
> > resonance.
> >
> > Suggestions on what might I give a look to
> > when I go back out tomorrow?
> >
> > Thanks & 73,
> >
> > Gary
> > KA1J
> >
> > _________________
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> >
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