[TowerTalk] Guy wire interaction - a case in point

[Pete Smith]

For years, the upper guy set on my 97' tower has been grounded unbroken
steel except for the top 21 feet, which were fiberglas insulators.  I was
always happy with the tribander right above the top of the first guy set,
but less so with the EF-240S 40m yagi 6 feet further up, which seemed to
lack F/B and pattern in general.

This summer, to accommodate a second tribander stacked down the tower, I
replaced the top guy set with Phillystran.  Immediately, performance of the
40m short yagi picked up noticeably.  All of a sudden, it has a pattern!

I wouldn't have thought that with a minimum separation of close to 30 feet
from the yagi, those grounded guy wires would have had an impact, but
evidently on 40m, they did.  Anyway, I'm not complaining.

Incidentally, the SWR behavior did not change at all on the 40m yagi, which
also confirms the idea that you can't always see interaction in the SWR.

73, Pete Smith N4ZR

Contesting is ... Extreme Radio

The World Contest Station Database 
is back up and running at
http://www.qsl.net/n4zr 



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