[TowerTalk] re: rhombics

[Jon, W4ZW]

Rick,

I had a Rhombic up for several years when I had a  large yard at my home in
Orlando, FL.  I won the right to put up an 80'  crank-up tower in spite of
the HO Covenants but deferred to my neighbors and put up the rhombic
instead.  It was about 70' high and supported by strategically located trees
and ran about 800' from the feed point to the terminated end.  I had it
fixed on Europe and it worked like gangbusters in the very narrow beam point
which seemed to be centered in southern Europe.   It also had some stray
lobes which varied widely depending on the band,  which worked well if the
DX happened to fall into the lobe aperture.  I opened the terminated end
several times, but there wasn't much in the extreme southern Pacific to hear
or work.

It did have one lobe on 40 which worked well into Northern Japan and parts
of Asiatic Russia.

It was a fun antenna but very directive.  I often heard other locals working
DX with good signal reports both ways, but they were just barely audible
with the Rhombic.   I would switch to a Butternut vertical I had, and they
popped out of the noise.  On the other hand, I often worked DX that I
couldn't hear on the vertical, and other locals could barely hear even
beaming them with tribanders.  Biggest problem was induced voltages from
Central Florida's fireworks from the summer T-storms.  I had extensive
lightening protection but I had to replace the coax and matching units at
least once a year and more often than not, twice or more a summer.  I could
never leave the antenna connected to any of my equipment and often observed
the zappings sparks across the coax connector whenever I just had it
disconnected and not grounded in spite of the surge protectors.  I
maintained and used  a large inventory of gas discharge units.

I agree that a rotatable stack is a better solution, but for the cost and
"concealibility, the Rhombic was fun and hard to beat if you can handle the
lightening aspect.



Jon Hamlet, W4ZW
Casey Key Island, Florida

"A little bit of paradise in the Gulf of Mexico"



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