[TowerTalk] FW: Change in SWR

[Jim Brown]

On 12/4/2013 8:44 PM, Matt wrote:
> It is easy science and engineering to make the tower base infinitely large,
> the cable permanently greasy, the ground plane perfectly conductive, and the
> guy anchors infinitely stout.  The real work comes in deciding how much
> large, greasy, conductive, and stout you can get for a buck and stay within
> the desired safety and performance parameters.

Exactly right. I recall a great story from my days in EE school.  A 
mathematician and an engineer were out drinking, and noted a lovely 
young thing at the other end of the bar. They wagered that they could 
move half the distance between themselves and the sweet young thing with 
each drink. The mathematician never got there, but the engineer got 
close enough for practical purposes.

Engineering is the practical application of science. I just returned 
from two days at a meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, where I 
heard many presentations about exactly that -- the practical application 
of science to solve problems in acoustics. I told one myself, about an 
acoustician who had died a year ago and was being honored, and it was 
one he had told to a group in a workshop I attended 30 years previous.

His client was the owner of a home recording studio, and the problem was 
that he was hearing excessive traffic noise. The "knee jerk" solution 
was quite expensive -- a room within a room with floating floors, air 
space between rooms, isolating doors, and so on.  The acoustician 
surveyed the situation, did some mental sums of costs of various 
solutions, and told his client to hire a paving contractor to fill the 
potholes in the road.

73, Jim K9YC

73, Jim K9YC