[TowerTalk] 160m OCF etc

[Brian Alsop]

Yes, if it conducts it will radiate.  This is the put up the any old 
thing philosophy.

However, experimentation is expensive and time consuming and has the 
possibility of hobbling ones signal.  That can lead to giving up operating.

Why not first try and learn from the available data on existing 
antennas?   Trouble is that there is so much misinformation and innuendo 
that separating the wheat from the chaff is difficult.

Also not every antenna began as an experiment.  Many of the designs were 
created by pencil and paper and available antenna theory first, then 
tried.  It wasn't just throw up a piece of wire in the air.

Today we are fortunate to have EZNEC and other programs which model 
antennas.  One can "try before you buy" and make comparisons with a 
standard antenna such as a dipole.  One can find something near optimum 
for ones constraints and have a pretty good idea how it will work.  Also 
you'll know what impedances it will have.  No point of designing an 
antenna you can't match.

Or you can just listen to what some friend says works and throw that up.

73 de Brian/K3KO

On 6/5/2013 12:23, r miles wrote:
>
> I won't try to comment on the theory of the engineers. I can just speak
> of my personal experience with one. Because of the location  of the
> center support I had to try an OCF. My short side actually sloped a bit.
> I simply put a half wave long 160m OCF with the peak height of 51'. 50
> ohm coax to a 4:1 balun at the feed point.  It was no world beater but
> in 3 yr.s running 500w I did work  127 DXCC entities.
> In 54 yr.s in the hobby I still  tell new OPs: try it. If you are
> limited by whatever reason give your antenna thoughts a real world try.
> Don't let the nay sayers put you off. Put up what you can & see if it
> works. We are experimenters. That's why we are called amateur operators.
> One of the new hams in our club lives in an apartment. He's playing with
> a very small loop on HF. In the last few months he's wrkd about a dozen
> entities. Not too bad. He put  up something & gave it a try.
> Every antenna we consider standard started life as an experiment....
>
> K9IL
> _______________________________________________



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