[TowerTalk] step away from steppir, Son

[W7CE]

> After spending all that money for a SteppIr antenna, nobody's gonna call
> their kid ugly.

The same could be said for an antenna farm consisting of multiple 
monobanders.  Not a cheap investment when you consider the cost of the 
antennas plus two or more towers to put them all on.  Question:  aren't 
people who think their kid is ugly more llikely to keep silent than brag 
about him or her?

> I am putting up a 4 element HyGain 204BA on a 34 foot boom.
> Can't wait to find me a horse race with a SteppIr!

It's tough to have a horse race when you're running on different tracks. 
Unless you have a nearby ham at the same elevation, with similar surrounding 
terrain you'll never be able to compare two antennas.

At design frequency, I expect that 204BA and the 4L SteppIR would be too 
close to call, performance wise.  However if you move 200 KHz away from the 
204BA's design frequency, F/R, gain and SWR will all have degraded while the 
SteppIR will simply retune and performance won't have changed.  If you only 
operate in a small portion of the band, none of that matters to you.  If, 
however, you operate both CW and SSB then you will appreciate the uniform 
performance across the entire band.

There are a lot of reasons for picking an antenna.  I could buy 7 
monobanders to replace my SteppIR and I'm sure I'd love them, especially 
after spending significantly more money than a single SteppIR costs.  I 
don't have room for more than a couple of HF antennas, so SteppIR is the 
logical choice for me.  However, if you have lots of tower slots open and 
like big monobanders, then God Bless You.  I'm always a little envious when 
I see a big, beautiful antenna farm, but I still smile everytime a break a 
pileup with my single SteppIR antenna.

73,
Clay  W7CE