Topband: Cage Vertical Worth It?

Dan Levin djl at andlev.com
Fri May 2 15:46:41 EDT 2008


I'm in the process of putting up a new vertical for 160.

The plan is to hang a ~80' vertical element between two trees, with a 'T'
capacity hat to resonate it and two raised resonant radials.

The question is this:

Is it worth making the vertical and capacity hat portions of the antenna out
of multiple wires (cage vertical), to increase bandwidth?

Modeling with NEC4WIN95 (mininec based) shows that a five wire vertical with
the five wires planer and the outer wires spaced four feet apart will
deliver much better bandwidth than a single wire (think of five wires spaced
one foot apart, all lined up next to each other like the teeth of a comb).
Does anyone have real world experience with such a beast?

Thanks!

                  ***dan, K6IF



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