[SCCC] WARC Antenna on a single tower for the contester?

[Timothy Coker]

I currently have a 55' crank up tower with 15' of mast sticking out above my
thrust bearing. I have an 80m inverted-v a few feet below the thrust
bearing, a F12 C31XR right above the thrust bearing, and a Cushcraft XM240
12' above the thrust bearing. I do not have the property for a second tower.

I love being serious during domestic contests and enjoy having fun during
world wide contests. I enjoy DXing during the interim of the contests that
catch my attention. However, my main interests by far are contests.

I put up a Cushcraft A3WS in between my C31XR and the XM240 with all of the
booms being placed in parallel with each other. I have about 6' of
separation in between each of the yagis. I did this because I was still
working on getting 100 DXCC entities on 30/17/12, which I have now
accomplished. I also knew it would help me build up my DXCC Challenge totals
so that I could hit 1,000 for the lumber. That is done. I lastly did it with
the fact that I need 67 more for #1 Honor roll, something I am still working
on.

The question I have is whether having a three element yagi sandwiched in
between my contest antennas is really worth it when my main interest lies in
contesting. DXCC stats are cool and I do enjoy getting the new band
entities, but it doesn't give me the same thrill as trying to place well in
a contest. I have no idea how little or how much interaction may be
occurring, but something has to give when extra, un-needed metal is around
our antennas during a contest.

The risk of interaction during a contest versus the reward of DX during the
off times is at question. While taking the A3WS down would be a personal
choice for my own interests, I imagine there must be other contesters out
there who have gone through this thought process? Maybe other's on the
reflector can weigh in on whether I am thinking short term and not long term
as my DX oriented Elmer would tell me. He's only interested in a 59(9) and
he's out of a pile up... while I want every last bit of energy oriented
toward holding a run frequency.

My initial steps towards removing the WARC yagi would be to leave the driven
element up as a rotatable dipole mounted in-line with the booms of my C31XR
and XM240 so as to minimize any potential interaction. My next step would be
to eventually replace it with a rotatable 80m dipole at the same point on
the mast.

Am I over analyzing here?

73,

Tim / N6WIN.

Checkout http://s192.photobucket.com/albums/z90/tjcoker/N6WIN%20LM354HD/ for
my tower install project, password is "73".