TopBand: The Hytower on 160M: (How) Does it Work?

[w2crs@kktv.com]

My message stated-
>>I guess the Hytower is a linearly loaded antenna with the 24' tower
>>section, and 24' 80M wire and 28' tubing above it fed in parallel.  Is
>>that your understanding? Can anyone help me here?  I'm not sure I
>>understand the linear loading, if indeed it is that.  If I ever get
>>time, I'll try to model it on YO.
Joe wrote-
PA>The Hytower is a quarter wave vertical on 80/40/20/15/10 meters. The stubs
PA>just provide individual decoupling for each band. The tower is used as a 
PA>radiator
PA>for all bands except 80. The 80 meter vertical is comprised of the wire and 
PA>the top spike.

Disagree, not on 75/80M even tho the manual says this.  The wire is 24'
and the "top spike" aluminun tubing is 28 feet.    Since when does a
52' vertical resonate on 3900 KHz?
As an experiment, I connected the normally insulated 28' aluminum
tubing directly to the top of the 24' tower and it resonated around 4.8
MHz as you would expect from the formula.
That's why it must be a linearly loaded vertical on 75/80 meters and
160M with additional base loading.
Or am I missing something?  Please, someone confirm that it is linearly
loaded or tell me where I error.

Joe wrote-
PA>The 27' feet of vertical is much better than squeezing the high current 
PA>portion of the vertical antenna (the feed point) into a coil at the base.
The
PA>MK-160 out performs the base loading coil in two ways. It solves the
PA>high voltage arc over problem of the base loaded version. It uncomprimises
PA>the high current section of the 1/4 wave antenna.

Not my experience, ot that of two others who replied to my earlier
posting.  First, the MK-160 attaches to the top of the tower at 24'.  I
ran the MK-160 wire over to a 40' tower.  I agree the Hytower with the
MK-160 might work well with a much higher support, but my highest tree
or tower is 40' high. 
 My experience is that using the Hytower as an inverted L with 24'
vertical and aprox 110' horizontal averaging 35' above ground is a very
poor 160M DX antenna.  My baseloaded Hytower ran cicles around the
inverted L Hytower.  BTW, I was using the same thousands of feet of
radials in both configurations.  Anyway, I didn't stay with the
inverted L cofiguration very long.  As a base loaded vertical it is
respectable antenna.  I've worked 60 countries with it in two partial
seasons.  My sloping FW loop averaging 25' above sloping ground is
better to the east coast and Europe, but that's another story!
The baseloaded Hytower is better in all other directions.
73,  Doug  DM78 Colorado



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