[TowerTalk] Taming an 80 m beam

[James W. Fisher, Jr.]

Chris,

I've had my adventures with big antennas too.  The tip of the iceberg of my
adventures is covered in the Force 12 coverage and pix of stacks:
http://force12inc.com/F12-STACKS.HTM

Since I have successfully tuned (or had help tuning) both the EF-140-style
40Ms and the new N-series, I can report that tuning the N-series is a
breeze as to resonance and SWR.  I switched from the earlier style for
greater bandwidth and apparent mechanical strength (so far, so good).  I
had to take everything down anyway for a Trylon tower switchout (long and
bitter story  which left me out of at least one whole year's real
contesting and short the dollar equivalent of the price of one of my Alpha
87As, as I plan to cover in spellbinding detail in a future CQ Contest
article), so I converted the C51XR-Hs to C51XRNs and considered themodest
work very worthwhile.  Support from F12 in the changeover was superb and
timely.

I also have four of the EF-180BV-D type verticals in my 4sq, and I must say
I haven't really had a problem tuning them.  This was  done numerous times
for phone vs. cw contests until I got the 4-position relays (which give me
OK dump returns in CW and DX phone segments), and with the aid of an Autek
RF-1 seemed to go quite by the book.

73,

Jim, VE1JF



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