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Re: [TowerTalk] Cushcraft/MFJ Traps

To: john@kk9a.com
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Cushcraft/MFJ Traps
From: Glenn Pritchard <gpritchard7000@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 13 Sep 2019 06:34:43 -0700
List-post: <mailto:towertalk@contesting.com>
Much the same, I had the Mosley shorty forty for years. After I took down my 3 
element Wilson it worked well for me, however the BC climate played havoc with 
the coils with green slime having to be removed occasionally. 

Glenn, VA7UO 

Sent from my iPhone

> On Sep 13, 2019, at 6:17 AM, john@kk9a.com wrote:
> 
> I currently have a pair of 2el shorty 40's made by Optibeam, model OB2-40. 
> These use a high Q coil in the center of the elements for loading and have an 
> 18' boom.  For months I have been modeling various full size 40m Yagis and 
> comparing them to my small antennas. Larger antennas have more bandwidth but 
> I have been amazed at the efficiency (at least in my model) of OptiBeam's 
> shortened elements.  If I replace my current small 75 pound antennas with two 
> full sized 350 pound 4 element OWA beams on a 48 ft boom, I will be only 2dB 
> louder.
> 
> John KK9A
> 
> jimlux wrote:
> 
>> On 9/12/19 12:42 PM, Jim Brown wrote:
>> 
>> I have two very different takes on this. First, traps are an inefficient way 
>> to build a multi-band antenna. That means they suck up gain. Also, because 
>> the elements are shorter, their radiation efficiency is reduced. The best 
>> multiband antennas don't use traps.
> 
> I'm not so sure about the efficiency aspect for shorter antennas - sure,
> for "very short", the matching network losses will increase, but the
> actual antenna efficiency isn't different (I^2*R losses are usually
> pretty low)
> 
> Take a 6 meter long dipole as an example. REsonant at roughly 24 MHz -
> here's the feedpoint impedance
> f    r    x
> 23.6    77.6359 -12.4921
> 23.8    79.7763 -2.8992
> 24    81.976    6.6949
> 24.2    84.237 16.2932
> 24.4    86.5613 25.8988
> 
> Now let's drop to 18 MHz, so the dipole would be 75% of resonant length
> f    r    x
> 17.6    33.6036 -316.66
> 17.8    34.6034 -305.433
> 18    35.6276 -294.325
> 18.2    36.6769 -283.331
> 18.4    37.7518 -272.445
> 
> So you'd need some sort of matching network to cancel out the 300 ohm
> reactance. It's pretty easy to come up with a coil that has a Q of 200,
> so the 300 ohm coil would have a resistance of 1.5 ohms. Compared to the
> 36 ohm radiation resistance, that's about 4% or 0.2 dB.
> 
> At 50% length:
> 
> 11.8 12.9553 -732.472
> 12 13.4523 -713.564
> 12.2 13.9618 -695.14
> 
> Now we're starting to be significant, a inductor Q of 200 is going to be
> around 3.5 ohms loss resistance, and against 13.5 ohms antenna R, that's
> a 20% loss (1 dB).
> 
> Of course, for many HF links, on receive, the SNR is determined by the
> atmospheric noise, and antenna gain (for lowish gain antennas < 10dB)
> doesn't change the received SNR - the reduced gain drops both the
> desired signal and the noise level.
> 
> For transmit, of course, it does affect the SNR that the other end sees.
> 
> 
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> 
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