[TowerTalk] Antenna tuning

[Edward W. Sleight]

Would like your input on this one....I'm presently building a somewhat
shortened element 3 element 40...Longest elements are coming in at 
about 50 feet with a loading inductor made out of old traps.  I have 
succesfully built this antenna for others 3 or 4 times. Issue of why
I don't want to go to full size elements is not revelent.

On the tuning, in the past, I have gamma matched each element, hauled
it into the air about 1/2 wave using a line between 2 towers, and with
a half wave line, tuned the element to where I wanted it to go.

On this one, I had a bright idea, and took the two halves of an element,
put a small screw in the end of each, and lifted them until the big
end was right off the gound. Put in a 6' ground rod, and connected
the MFJ directly to the element and ground. Got it right where I 
wanted it ( have only done the reflector so far, and I got that figure
from taking off all the elements from the NBS yagi, scaleing it to 40,
and then by trial and error, resonated the element.... )

Have tuned the 2 halves to the exact same frequency ( well, to be
honest,
as exact as I could, which is about 5 kc )

So, in summary, I have elements obtained from an optimized design which
I have split in two, and tuned them as verticals.

Statement: I can see no reason the element will shift frequency when
it is horizontal and in place.

Question?  What do you think of this 
method?

73,

Ed

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