Topband: poor antenna, rich score

ted demopoulos kr1g@hotmail.com
Wed, 09 Feb 2000 17:20:51 PST


My topband antenna was picked on, even before I put it up, with comments 
like "where's the rest of it?", "you're going to use 1/8 wavelength elevated 
radials - are you nuts", and the like.

Its 38 feet tall, with four 1/8 wave elevated radials (and a common loading 
coil to make the radials electrically 1/4 wavelength). A commercial 
Gladiator Vertical. And furthermore, I'm very new to topband.

Worked over 100 Europeans, VK, ZL, KH6, 4X, etc in a SINGLE weekend in the 
CQ160WW contest - and I'm no hotshot contester either! (not yet :). I do 
have lots of 80m experience, I'm stubborn:) (actually I love the antenna, 
although I only have the following to compare it to).

The previous antenna was a semi-resonant dipole (I'm guessing it was 
tower/guywire interaction, over 3:1 SWR)- maybe 200-300 watts output til the 
AMPs pprotection circuitry would kick out. Worked all continents in about a 
month!

I'm sure big antennas help (I plan to find out), but even little stuff 
works. I even got VK6 and several EUs barefoot while waiting for the Amp to 
warm up with the dipole :)

73

Ted KR1G


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