[TowerTalk] 160m ANT

[Doug Turnbull]

Carol,
    I have a similar inverted L supported by my tower and it works great.
In my case I have sixty-five foot of tower with steel tube raising a further
15 feet topped by 15 feet more of fiber-glass tubing for 95 feet in total.
The wire is closer to 136 foot in length than 160 feet and the wire comes
down to ground level where it is feed directly through a DX-Engineering RF
choke and worked against six raised radials which slope up to fence posts
and are ultimately supported in trees at heights of seven to ten feet.   I
think you are better off taking the wire down to ground level for a longer
vertical length and in my case cutting the wire to a quarter wave length
seems to work best.   I found that copper wire tends to break from wear
where it passes through the pulley at top and so use some stranded copper
coated steel wire available from Radiowares and perhaps the Wireman.

     This tower is used exclusively for this inverted L and while supposedly
self supporting is stayed at the 20 foot level.   The antenna has been up
for two years now and the tower has stood up to very strong winds.   I do
advise care though in selecting the wire used for the inverted L.

     I would estimate that mine is one of the strongest signals from EI land
and compares well with competition from the UK.   An inverted L of the type
I describe works and works well.   Try to go for the longest vertical run.
I think you will find it better and easier to bring the bottom of the
antenna down close to ground level.

                      73 Doug EI2CN

-----Original Message-----
From: towertalk-bounces at contesting.com
[mailto:towertalk-bounces at contesting.com] On Behalf Of Larry K4AB
Sent: 15 October 2011 16:33
To: Carol Richards
Cc: towertalk at contesting.com
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] 160m ANT

Carol,

Years ago I had a friend who tried a similar installation.  He never could
get
the thing to tune properly.  He felt, that since the antenna was so close to
the tower, he was actually "shock" feeding his tower.

He later just shunt-fed his tower and had much better success.

GL 73!
Larry K4AB

On Sat, Oct 15, 2011 at 9:19 AM, Carol Richards <n2mm at comcast.net> wrote:

> I would like some thought on the antenna that I am planning to put up
> shortly. It will be an inverted L, total length 160 feet 100 feet vertcal,
3
> feet away from the tower and the rest sloping NE. The base will be about
10
> feet off the ground, and I will use 4 elevated radials. I will feed the
base
> of the antenna through a common mode choke to a kw-type tuner, before
> running the coax to the shack....
>
>
> Yes, no, maybe?
>
>
> Carol
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