Topband: Antennas

[rick darwicki]

For many years I tried every possible ground mounted short vertical with my 35' city limit.
>From the base of my tower I installed about 1000' of buried radials in my sprinkler trenches and connected to the pool steel when it was going in. 
 
I tried base, center, and top loaded verticals, loading the tower gamma style and with a slant feed. Year after year I worked the same stations in ARRL 160 and none east of the Mississippi. The first antenna that got me into the east coast was a 1/4 wave of 450 ohm ladder line shorted at the far end and fed at ground with 50 ohm coax. It was 35' up and the rest out to a tree about 25' high. Only DX for years was a few PAC, JAs and SA.
 
My current antenna which has brought WAC, and many EU stations exceeds the city limit but they haven't bother me about it. I have my roof covered with radials and use an inverted L about 20' above ground, 33 up and the rest out to the tree but about 35' up now. There are 4 full size 160 radials snaked around and other for 80/40/30/20/15/12/10. It has HB 40m and 80m traps built to take the Alpha and my 3KW Nye can tune it to any band.
 
The ONLY ground mounted vertical that ever worked for me was a full size "beer can" 40 M vertical with 60 full size radials......... DX magnet with my AR-3, VF-1 and DX-20 hi hi


Rick, N6PE
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