[TowerTalk] Antenna surface area

[Stan or Patricia Griffiths]

WA9ALS - John wrote:

> On a serious note, I don't think antenna manufacturers lie to us about stuff
> like wind surface area.  What's really more important than any one claim is
> whether antenna, tower, and rotator manufacturers are using the same methods
> to calculate surface area of the things that they are testing!  73

I think John is being pretty generous with antenna manufacturers.  I did a little
research into my extensive files on antenna brochures from back as far as 30 years ago
and found the following examples of wind area claims for essentially the same 4 element
20 meter monobander:

December 1968, Hy-Gain Brochure, the claim is 12.8 square feet for the 204BA.

Sometime around 1971, I sent for a Wilson brochure and it claimed their 4 element 20
called an "M420" (almost exactly the same dimensions as the Hy-Gain 204BA) to have a
wind area of 8.0 square feet.

June 1973, Hy-Gain Brochure, the claim is now 3.9 square feet for the 204BA.

Sometime around 1974, Wilson put out a price list including specifications.  Now the
area claim for the Wilson "M204" (they changed model numbers for the antenna, too) is
3.9 square feet.

A 1977 Wilson brochure now claims the Model M-420 to have 7.4 square feet.  This
brochure also includes Wilson's line of tubular crankup towers which forced them to be
more realistic since they also put wind load capability specs on their towers.  They
couldn't very well have a Wilson antenna causing the failure of a Wilson tower when both
were within their OWN ratings, could they?

Sometime around 1980 (brochure is not dated but obviously newer than the June 1973
Hy-Gain brochure), Hy-Gain claims the 204BA to be 7.27 square feet.

Sometime around 1985 (brochure not dated, but obviously newer than the approximately
1980 Hy-Gain brochure because they have now switched to stainless hardware), Hy-Gain
claims to 204BA to be 7.3 square feet.

I have all of the above original brochures in my file and what you see here is copied
directly from my file copies.

It is pretty obvious to me that what was going on between Hy-Gain and Wilson was a
specsmanship war.  It had little or nothing to do with truth in advertising.  I knew in
1973 when I saw the Hy-Gain brochure that claimed the 204BA was only 3.9 square feet
that this was all BS and none of it could be trusted.  Not much has changed in the last
30 years to inspire me to trust antenna manufacturers much more than I did then.  Hey,
if we actually HAD a 100% truthful antenna manufacturer, could he sell enough antennas
to stay in business?  I doubt it . . .  Most of the hams that I know would rather buy BS
than the truth and most antenna manufacturers are well aware of that fact . . .

Stan
w7ni@easystreet.com



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