Topband: Cage Vertical Worth It?

[Jim Brown]

On Fri, 2 May 2008 12:46:41 -0700, Dan Levin wrote:

>deliver much better bandwidth

This is well known good engineering practice, and I'm thinking about 
doing it myself. No debate. But unless you have a very low power 
feedline, any reasonable tuner will make up the difference in 
bandwidth. And the difference in loss is not likely to matter unless 
your radial system is poor. The real advantage comes in the form of 
not having to retune when you QSY over a wider bandwidth. In other 
words, you'll care if you're a serious topband contester, but not if 
you're a casual operator. 

What I DO recommend is tuning the antenna (by using more toploading) 
to make the feedpoint look like 50 +jX, then tune out X with a 
series capacitor. NEC will get you there. I'm doing that now. 

73,

Jim K9YC