[TowerTalk] Gotham antenna

[Van K7VS]

No only did I use one of their verticals (was always intrigued by their ads 
I first started seeing in the fifties i.e. "work over one hundred countries 
using the gotham vertical."  Not much of a performer on eighty as think the 
overall length was around twenty something feet.  Mine came with two pieces 
of EMT a couple of hose clamps and some B&W coil stock and an alligator clip 
attached to s short piece of wire and a one page instruction sheet.  Buy 
what the heck, think it was under thirty bucks including shipping.   BUT 
WAIT A MINUTE  ....my very first quad back in the mid sixties was a two 
element GOTHAM quad with bamboo spreader.  Put it up at forty feet and 
kicked butt!!  Have used nothing other than quads since.  BTW, I lost it in 
a freak snowstorm in Salem, Oregon just before the start of the ARRL CW DX 
contest in 1966.  What a bummer.

73, Van


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Billy Cox" <aa4nu at ix.netcom.com>
To: <towertalk at contesting.com>
Sent: Monday, July 09, 2007 10:37 AM
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Gotham antenna


> >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
>
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