[TowerTalk] Gotham antenna

[Billy Cox]

>I DO remember all those Gotham ads. But, curiously, I never 
>actually talked to anybody who actually was using one.

Oh what the heck ... two stories ... from many years ago:

1. Being a "kid" and limited to what money I earned mowing
yards, I purchased one of their 80-10m verticals. 23' of 
probably cheap tubing and a large base coil as I recall.

Put it together per the instructions and it didn't work,
so went out to the local university and started to read
the antenna books and learned what to try next and why.

Finally ended up extending it to 33' for 40m and then
manually switching in a revised base coil for 80m CW.
I think parts of it are still out there in the junkbox.

2. My younger brother <then WN4ZLJ> won a Alliance U100 at
a hamfest. One of my mentors, Tom - K4TTA told me to go home 
and order a 4L 15m from Gotham, BUT to throw away their
directions, and make it only a 3L 15m using other specs.

It came in the week before the ARRL SSB, and being a young 
kid, I thought "Hey 4 elements is better than 3 right!"

So I put it up per their instructions, at 30' on TV masting
next to our chimney. After the first 24 hours, I realized it 
was not much better than my Gotham vertical was on 15m! 

Remembered what K4TTA had told me <DUH>, went up on the roof 
pulled the 1st director off the boom, tweaked the homebrew 
gamma match <each time requiring a time back to the roof> 
and NOW it seemed to finally be working. OK, I learn slow.

I "lost it" in a wind storm when the TV masting I had in 
the rotor sheared off, and the antenna flew to the ground.

I was on 15m and had noticed that when I turned the yagi to 
work a VK station ... the band went DEAD. As I started to
troubleshoot the root cause, I stepped outside and looked 
up at the mast. Thought I was crazy when I looked UP and 
in the moonlight, saw that the mast was EMPTY at the top.
The antenna was FB, as it landed 'flat' with no damage!

By summer, it had been replaced with the first of many
quads and it was "retired" for parts on other projects. 

As I recall the boom was simply 2x 10' TV masts ... 

Much as I would want to bash the above two antennas, the
up side to all of this was the creating of a yearning to
learn more about how antennas actually work and why ...

... and such has continued now for many many years.

Long live Gotham!  B->

73 de Billy, AA4NU