Topband: 160M vertical and snow

[JAMESAMS88 at aol.com]

In a message dated 3/27/2007 2:54:13 P.M. Central Daylight Time,  
royanjoy at ncn.net writes:

I wonder  if I should elevate the vertical of about 30 inches or if this
snow will  not affect the vertical...
Anybody experienced this fact before..  I  mean snow at the base of the
vertical....


I have a home brew 65 foot vertical sitting on a telephone  insulator at 
ground level. I use this antenna on 3 bands 40 thu 160. Top band is  a base loaded 
coil. All three bands can be switched remotely by relays.  I  often get 
snowfall that covers up the insulator and up to 10 inches or more of  the tower.  I 
notice very little if any change in SWR on any of the three  bands.  When it 
does warm up and the snow starts to melt I do shovel the  snow away from the 
insulator.  The only problem I have had with snow is  when my loading coil 
which I found out was too small.  It warmed up enough  to melt the blowing snow 
and formed a ball of ice around the coil which disabled  top band.  The coil was 
in a plastic container but the snow still got  in and I was only running 100 
watts.   I remade my coil out of  copper tubing and never had any more 
problems even with a 500 watt  amp.   Jim W0NFL of Iowa. 



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