[TowerTalk] Slopers

[Doug Renwick]

My advice is to try the sloper and see for yourself if it
becomes your best or not your best antenna.
I have used full size half slopers on 160m for years and so
far I have found nothing better.  My 160m contest/DXCC records
are part of my proof.  Lucky design choice...maybe.
Ignore the doubters of this configuration and try it for yourself.
Hopefully, you will be pleasantly surprised.

Doug/VA5DX


I don't know how or why anyone can assume a slopper worked
against a tower at one installation would work the same as a
slopper worked against some other tower.

First, guaranteed, the current leaving one coax terminal
into a load ALWAYS equals the current at the other terminal
of the coax. The only exception is when the coax is acting
like an antenna and radiating.  The current, once it gets in
the tower away from the feed connection point, can increase
or decrease. It also splits or divides between the tower
above and the tower below. The division and the amount of
current going each and every place depends on what is above
or below that point.

The tower is indeed the other "dipole" leg of the system.

This is why the N4KG feed system and quarter wave sloppers,
or any antenna that works against a random tower, are so
unpredictable performance. It's pure random luck how well or
how poorly these random systems work. As a general rule they
never radiate better than a proper shunt fed tower or
Marconi of similar height....and they certainly can be and
often are significantly worse.

73 Tom