Topband: Re: Element grounding

[Ford Peterson]

Tom,

Thanks for the input.  I agree with you 100%.  But I'm not going to ground them.

The housing that holds the stepper motor looks like a vacuum formed two piece arrangement.  The thing is sealed up pretty tight.  Air is allowed to pass through foam pads in the element tips.  The elements are spooled up on two separate spools.  The tape runs through a brush that is really 4 separate contacts on each tape.  The contacts are what appears to be the same material the elements are made of, but round like 1/8" rod.  4 of these are welded to the tips of a spring that looks like the letter "H".  Grounding the elements would not be a big deal.  Imagine the letter H illustration.  A screw passes through the cross member between the vertical portions of the "H".  There is one brush on each tape with a wire between them on the parasitics, and of course the balun / transformer on the driven.  The easy fix would be a wire from that jumper, outside the waterproof housing, and attached to the boom.  Copious amounts of silicone should seal it back up.  Unfortunately, that wire will be approximately 8" long and will not be balanced.  I have no idea what that would do.  The direct connection would be straight through the cover of the housing (maybe 2" long but balanced) and no longer waterproof.

I considered much of the information you provide here.  I even confronted the boys at FM directly.  I think that until it becomes a problem for somebody (I've monitored the SteppIR reflector on yahoogroups for almost 2 years and no mention in my memory), the FM boys are not going to change it.  I considered mods myself.  For various reasons, I've decided to just leave it.  I may be sorry.  But so far so good.

#1 - I assume a modification would void their 4 year warrantee.  
#2 - the mod could introduced imbalances that cause more problems than cure
#3 - the 'fix' in the event of a failure is not that expensive.  Not much different than a run of feedline.

Ford-N0FP
ford at cmgate.com