[TowerTalk] Early Report:: Gladiator Verticals
Jim Reid
jreid@aloha.net
Thu, 07 May 1998 10:37:30 -1000
Aloha from the Garden Island of Kauai,
First of all, I am very impressed with the Gladiators. Their construction
materials are tops, very heavy walled tubing, lots of section overlap,
3" between most sections, more near the lower end. Impossible to
assemble wrong. Very clear instruction pamphlets for each different
model. Bob Myers, W1XT, the designer and producer of the Glads, is
VERY helpful. I have probably exchanged several dozen email
chats as these have gone up. I had gotten all seven Gladiators
up and operating by May 1st, a few days ago.
My antenna set up before, included my triband Mosley, TA-34-XL,
a 21 foot boom unit; parallel 30, 40, and 80 meter dipoles, installed
"droopy" fashion, a la, inverted V, and four 600 foot long wires
among which I could switch-select pairs to form 1200 foot long,
center fed doublets: they were supposed to be V-beams, but,
did not work well. Ground below them is a ravine, and the
far ends actually wind up below the top of the ravine on the
far side, hi!
So I had, and still do, antennas for all nine HF bands. The Mosely
boom also carries a trapped 12/17 meter rotating dipole element.
My motivation was to first improve my 160 and 80 meter performance,
and then to be able to do antenna polarization diversity reception
on the bands from 40 on up. I have the FT-1000 with which you can
use two simultaeous rcving antennas, one feeding VFOA, the other VFOB.
This
results in some amazing improvements, and even works on 80 and 160
pairing the Gladiators as the main, VFOA antenna for both rcv and xmit,
and the 1200 foot doublet feeds the sub-rcvr using VFOB. This set up,
however, will not work DX operating split. You must use a single
antenna, the Gladiators of course on 160 up thru 40, for split
frequency operation.
I am very pleased with the performance of these verticals on all
seven of the bands for which they are now available; Bob plans
to announce a triband vertical, by offering some add-on kits for
the present 30 meter unit to form an all WARC band triband vertical.
>Now for the questions.
>1. What type of Gladiator do you have, the TL or CL version? If the TL,
>how much guying to I need at the top for the top hat radials?
Top loaded for both 160 and 80. No added guying needed on either
as the top hat wires and ropes give adequate support to the upper
wiggly part. However both have guy eye loops about 19 feet up from
the base, to which I have four more light Dacron guy ropes attached.
My location clearly needs the mid-length guying as the trade winds
are often around 30 mph here, with stronger gusts. So far all seven
of the antennas have withstood our Spring trades gusting to
45 mph or so.
>2. If you have a combination of both CL and TL, which performs best?
The TL have a few 10's of kHz bandwidth more than the CL loaded units.
>3. I noted on Tower Talk that there was some discussion about the number of
>radials. Have you increased the number on your installation? If so, have
>you noticed a big difference in performance?
No, and not sure I will. W8JI, Tom, insists that around 32 elevated
radials are
needed to get all the performance possible. However, that does not seem
to be the opinion of others, nor of Dick Weber, K5IU, who published the
results of his Nec-WIN modeling of elevated verticals using elevated radials.
His results reveal, at the very greatest, a 0.65 dB "improvement" in going
from two or four radials up to 120 radials. However radial number was not
really the main point of his work, published in Communications Quarterly,
Spring 1997 issue. His main interest was the distribution of RF current
among the radials, and radial length. He examined radials from 45 to
150 RF signal degrees in length (90 degrees = 1/4 wavelength). He
concludes it would be better to use four 45 degree length radials,
and not use 1/4 wave length radials.
Note: 45 degrees radials have a high capactive reactance, so an
inductor coil must be installed and tuned at the vertical feed
point!
Dick also did a lot of testing
of the RF current in radials using Palomar Eng. RF current gadget.
However, I believe he should have done RF field strength tests, as
all his conclusions are based upon modeling parameter assumptions
from his radial RF current measurements -- seems incomplete to
me. W8IJ's thought are based mostly upon his own tests and
some anecdotal results reported to him buy a guy in South
America. Bob Myers at Gladiator says four elevated radials
are enough. The 6Y4A expedition set their world records with
an all vertical antenna set up using only two elevated radials per
vertical. But they were set up right beside the ocean, essentially
on the beach, but set back 45 or 50 feet from the water edge.
This stuff is all to be presented in Dayton next week at one
of the Forum sessions. I will be there.
Here is a copy of my last input from W8JI:
As he says more radials than four are best, I wondered if they
should also be elevated, or could they be on the ground.
He says, elevated, plus the following info:
"
> Thanks Tom, should the additional elevated radials be 1/4 wave
> long, or random length?
Two things I measured:
With a FEW elevated radials, any earth connection messes them up.
With a bunch of elevated radials, the earth connection doesn't make a
bit of a change in FS.
With a few radials, length is critical.
With a bunch of radials, length doesn't matter (if long enough)
Have fun, the breakover point was about 15-30 radials.
73, Tom W8JI"
>4. How do your verticals compare to the other antennas you have?
Some times better, sometimes not. Depends upon the time of day,
or the arrival angle of the incoming DX signal. The tribander is
usually "louder" than the 10, 15, and 20 verticals, but not always,
and performance, at least for rcv is always better using the
antenna diversity approach mentioned above, on the these
three triband bands. The 10 meter Glad is up off the roof of
the house, and seems better; the others are all about 200
feet away, and all are up on Radio Shack push up poles,
so I can walk around under the radials near the antennas.
Because of it's location, I would guess my 10 meter Glad
is performing as a true ground plane antenna. So would
adding 28 more radials to all the others bring them up,
as W8IJ opines?
>
>5. How has the service been from Gladiator?
Excellent and outstanding, really personal service by Bob.
>
>6. What is your bandwidth for 80M? Also, 160M if you have one for that band?
TL160
1800...1.5:1
1810...1.2
1820...1.1
1830...1.07..freq at which I chose to resonate the antenna
1840...1.2
1850...1.3
1860...1.6:1
TL80
3505...1.4:1
3525...1.3
3555...1.3
3600...1.4
3700...1.5
3800...1.7
I set the TL80 up for resonance near the FISTS calling frequency of 3558.
Of course, with the XMatch Classic Low Band tuner, I can tune
for 1.0 swr anywhere in the 160 or 80 meter bands. With both of
these top loaded antennas, the resonant frequency, area of lowest
vswr is set by moving the tie off point of the radials further out from or
closer to the vertical base; the top hat wires run along and
above the elevated radial wires below, and the supporting
ropes tie off at pretty much the same location as the far ends
of the elevated radials.
>7. Have you used other verticals or compared the Gladiators to any other
>verticals? If so, how does the Gladiator compare?
Yes, sell the R7000! I had an R7, pretty much the same antenna and it
never was able to deliver an S9 signal on any of its bands to my rig!!
When I put up my inverted V dipoles for 30 and 40, I was shocked at
the strength of incoming signals our here from the US mainland, Japan,
Australia, etc. So I took down the R7, gave it to my son in California,
and put up a triband beam on a crank up/down tubular US Tower,
MA 550. Am happy to report that the Gladiators come close to the
same signal level much of the time as delivered by my Mosely
tribander, and even stronger at times; the 30 and 40 Gladiators
easily outperform the inverted V's but the apex of the V's
is lower than the tops of the Glads, though not sure that has
much to do with it. Believe the dipoles are really NVI cloudwarmers,
while the Gladiators get much of the signal down to the horizon
where the DX energy lurks! I r eally do not have too much info
on the 160 and 80 bands, as from out here they have been
pretty noisy lately! Guess the season is over for the lowbanders
until late Summer/Fall.
>8. Is there anything about the Gladiators that you have noticed that could
>be better or anything that bothers you about them?
I would go for your installation hidden in the trees. My wife is still
fussing over the looks of the top hat wires and really tall poles out
back! Of course they are around 50 feet tall on the Radio Shack
push up poles! A bunch of info on the refletor these days reports
that trees do not harm the performance of verticals.
>9. Finally, would you recommend them? (Probably yes based on the number
>you have installed hi hi)
Yes, I have no plans to take any of them down, hi.
>Jim, sorry to be so long winded, but if these verticals are as good as I
>hear, I may consider a 40M and 160M vertical as well as the 80M.
Well, you see Jim, I got even by sending back an even longer
winded response. Hope I provided useful info for you.
By the way, if you haven't found it yet, the Gladiator
web site is at:
http://www.primenet.com/~bmyers/glad.html/glad.html
and, of course, I am just a very pleased Gladiator customer, and
the only cash involved is that which I sent them!!
73, Jim, KH7M
--
FAQ on WWW: http://www.contesting.com/towertalkfaq.html
Submissions: towertalk@contesting.com
Administrative requests: towertalk-REQUEST@contesting.com
Problems: owner-towertalk@contesting.com
Search: http://www.contesting.com/km9p/search.htm