Topband: sloper antennas

[Tom Rauch]

> My attempts at top feeding in one form or another are
intended to mitigate this
> disadvantage as much as I can.  I guess a lot of guys may
be in similar
> positions.

It may not mitigate as much as we hope for, although
certainly any improvement can be helpful. It may actually
not help anything at all, or even make things worse.

Frankly Greg there is no iron-clad rule about how these
systems work and what they do. Results depend heavily on the
tower and what is on it and a half-dozen other things.

The really bad thing about a 1/4 wl slopper is it generally
bends back towards ground at a narrow angle with respect to
the tower. It behaves more like a flared transmission line
terminated in the lossy earth than an antenna in some
situations. Moving that current around can increase loss,
decrease loss, or not change loss at all.

No point in going on about this. It is impossible to define
the advantages and flaws of a system when the piece of wire
the system is named after is often not even working mostly
like an antenna. That's why I call them sloppers and not
slopers. They might do anything, and probably often don't do
anything close to what we think unless the counterpoise
(tower and junk on it) is electrically massive.

73 Tom