[TowerTalk] Help in planning a new QTH

[Peter Dougherty]

At 00:32 15-03-05, Al Toothaker wrote:

>It would be interesting to hear why you were told that the 55' tower and
>Yagi/Vees were NOT recommended.  Casual operations over the years with a
>tribander and two dipoles at 50' or lower have allowed me to confirm over
>320 entities and 5BDXCC.  And it has been fun along the way.

Oh, the 55' tower, yagi and VEEs were indeed both highly suggested and 
recommended; it was just the SteppIR that was not. Indeed, looking at the 
specs, it would seem the SteppIR (even the 4-el version) has somewhat 
significantly less gain that others, especially the Force 12 C31XR. Thing 
is, that Force 12 is a behemoth and would NOT pass the XYL test in a 
million years. I think even the 4-el SteppIR may be asking for a lot.

I was originally convinced that the SteppIR was the way to go because it's 
one antenna solution for 10-20 in one relatively neat package. Since I'm 
not going up 75 or 100+ feet, I felt it might be better to get something 
with a little more "oomph" to compensate for the lower height. But, I feel 
as if I either have to settle for the lower performance of the SteppIR or 
risk marital disharmony and a lot of aluminium. Are there options aside 
from these two that I should seriously consider, or do you think I've 
written of the SteppIR unnecessarily?

Can anybody point me to real-world performance reports on the 3 element 
versus 4 element SteppIR, and perhaps how those two compare to other 
conventional tribanders. I don't want to drink the kool-aid and ask this in 
the SteppIR group (or equally-obviously looking on the FM Web site) because 
I think I know what the answers will be in advance <grin>.


- pjd

W2IRT