[TowerTalk] Comparison between SteppIR and Cushcraft Log Periodic?

Doug Rehman rehman at surveil.com
Wed Sep 6 00:20:26 EDT 2006


Just for the other side...

I've got the Cushcraft log at 55' in Central Florida. My primary HF contest
rig is a Yaesu MKV Field.

While my installation is not a "big gun", I work anything I hear- usually
with 100 watts and usually with just a couple of calls. I don't have a
SteppIR to compare the log against, but I can't imagine it would be THAT
much better. (I do have a Butternut vertical up- the log compared to the
vertical is night and day.)

I'm not sure I'd buy into the log causing more rx overload- not for the
typical ham station. The SteppIR doesn't have razor sharp skirts like a
premium crystal filter- if the strong signal is on the same band, the
SteppIR is going to pump it into your receiver just as well as the log.
While the SteppIR should greatly attenuate a non-harmonic out of band signal
that the log would pass along, it'd take one heck of an out of band signal
to overload a decent modern receiver. 

The reason you don't see big gun contest stations running logs- they design
for multi-multi or SO2R where there WILL be huge out of band signals
present. 

Likewise, if you need your antenna to attenuate spurious and/or harmonic
radiation, you've got bigger problems than what type of antenna to use. 

I'm very happy with my log. Personally, I think logs are the Rodney
Dangerfield of the antenna world- they get no respect.

As the old saying goes, one man's meat is another man's dog food...

Doug
K4DDR



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