[TowerTalk] Another Steppir feature

[David Hachadorian]

A little-recognized feature of the Steppir, compared to other 
multiband antennas, is that it tuned for only one band at a time, 
so it is less disturbing to other antennas in the vicinity.

For example, consider the case of my buddy across town, W7WW. He 
operates in contests, primarily RTTY, using two radios. He has am 
M2 KT36XA at 70', a 40-2CD at 78', and in between them, a Steppir 
dipole at 74'. All 3 antennas radiate in the same direction. When 
he is using the XA on 10, 15, or 20m, the steppir is always tuned 
to a different band for the second radio, so it doesn't mess up 
the pattern on the XA. The XA does throw off the tuning of the 
steppir slightly, but he compensates for that by adjusting the 
length of the steppir with a different controller memory setting. 
With bandpass filters, it's pretty clean in the Rx on all band 
combinations. We have verified by F/B measurements that the 
steppir does not degrade the XA on any of the band combinations.

Conceivably, you could operate So2R with a pair of Steppir beams 
just a few feet apart, since they would always be tuned to 
different bands. The separation would have to be enough that the 
one on 15 didn't degrade the one on 10.

By the way, W7WW's steppir dipole at 74', with 1500 watts, is a 
very effective antenna for SO2R S&P!


Dave Hachadorian, K6LL
Yuma, AZ