[TowerTalk] SUMMARY OF RESPONSES TO MY 160M INVERTED L /SHUNT FED TOWER QUESTIONS

[Tom Sykes]

In my previous post, I forgot to include one additional response that I
received from John, N2NU:

"Drive in a ground rod and solder heavy copper wire to it.  Attach radials
by soldering to this wire.  To add more radials, just solder on another
lenghth of wire to the ground rod.  The bus looks neat, but this way it is
all copper to copper joints (with solder), maybe a better electrical
connection than the mechanical method, and ultimate flexibility...I would
support the the end of the el from the tower end with some rope and the
corner from your second support, rather than the other way around.  This
lets you put other antennas on the tower and rotate them too, as well as
keeping the vertical away from the tower.  Mine are about 100 feet from the
tower, but no need to go this far.  The corners are suppported by high
trees.

If you cut the length right, you don't need (a variable capacitor) to do
this.  The arrl does this to raise the Z of the system, and tune out
inductive reactance with the capacitor.  If you can get a decent vertical
length (like greater than 50-60 feet), the impedance will be high enough
that your swr should be just fine.  At any rate, why waste the variable
capacitor.  Use it temporarily to tune, then insert a fixed capacitor of the
right value.  I would not use the cap at all."

73,

Tom, NU7J
nu7j@webcombo.net


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