[TowerTalk] Antennas for 80m

[David Gilbert]

If he was going to dedicate a 43 foot antenna to 80m, he easily could 
top load it for good performance and efficiency.  At my previous QTH, I 
put up a 44 foot vertical (it just happened to be how much tubing I had 
handy) on top of my flat roof home, guyed with nylon twine at the top 
and at about the 2/3 point.  The top guy lines included 4 perpendicular 
lengths of 10 gauge aluminum wire (Radio Shack guy wire) each about 11 
feet long connected to the top of the pole and sloping down at about a 
45 degree angle.  I had modeled the setup in advance with EZNEC for 
resonance and it came out almost dead on when I put it up, even though I 
was only able to feed it against counterpoise wires rather randomly 
stretched across the roof.  The bandwidth was not wide so I still used a 
tuner in the shack, but the SWR on the line was reasonably low.  I 
worked about 120 countries from Arizona with it the first year, although 
it took an amp to get the harder ones and it definitely put a strain on 
the ears to hear many of them through the band noise.  The suggestion 
somebody made to use a separate receiving antenna, such as a small 
pennant or K9AY loop, is a good one.

73,
Dave   AB7E



On 4/23/2011 10:31 AM, Tom Osborne wrote:
> I think I'd stay away from those '43 foot antennas'.  We had one of those at
> FD last year and it didn't work all that well for 80.  You can make them
> load up, but don't think the efficiency is all that good.  73
> Tom W7WHY
>
>
>
> DX Eng might have some other 80/40 options too.
>
>
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