Topband: 160 vertical advice needed

[Bob Tellefsen]

Dan
>From what I have read, putting your top loading wires at 60 ft
essentially wastes the 14 ft of stinger above them.  You would do better
if you could run the top loading wires from the top of the stinger.
Then you get into the question of how much down tilt of the wires you can
afford,
as they tend to cancel some of the radiation from the vertical section
between the
top and bottom elevations of the loading wires.  It's a tradeoff.  Modeling
could
give you an idea of the optimum wire length and droop angle.  A top loading
coil would reduce the length of  loading wire, and thus the amount of
vertical
partially cancelled.

For real convenience, I suggest getting the vertical resonant below 1800 kHz
so you can use a series cap to resonate it.  Then make the cap remotely
tunable with a motor and reduction gear.  I'm doing this with a 60 ft
vertical
and it works quite well.  Really handy for QSY during a rain storm :-)  I
like
to stay dry myself.

Good luck and 73
Bob N6WG