[TowerTalk] Verticals

[Tim Kass]

My experience in the Midwest is dipoles mounted horizontally work well.. I don't think the ground conductance works well in Ohio or surrounding.. out West (Idaho) my friend W8TM, says everyone has verticals..  I have a hytower but live in a city lot 5 miles West of Cincinnati, cannot set up a serious radial system so have tried many ground rods and then elevated radials, a few inches to a few feet off the ground due the mounting of the Hytower on ground.. but the dipoles and Vees up around 40 feet and up to 60 feet, my highest tree, always beat the Hytower.. one problem with the hytower I felt was that, despite being 53 feet tall, the top 26 foot spike only radiates on 80 meters.. the tower itself, BX tower section, is 24 feet and matches pretty well itself to 40 meters, all of the other tuning stubs are for other bands.. so I thought, I like 40 meters and would like to get the antenna up as high as possible...so I fed the Hytower at the 24 foot level..the 26 foot spike is isolated from the rest of the top of the tower and there is a wire that connects to it and runs down the center of the BX tower sections to the base, where it is normally fed.. but I cut the wire at the junction of the wire and the BX tower top section meet and fed it with 450 ohm ladder line, with 15" stand offs all the way down the tower to about 10 feet and ran that to the shack, into a tuner of course. It would tune anything with the tuner but it worked better on 40 meters (essentially a vertical dipole now) than any of the other configurations and I was able to utilize the entire length of the Hytower more effectively I thought.. well, that worked well for a few years until I got the itch for a beam antenna and didn't have room for both the Hytower and a tower for a small beam.... that's my story and I'm sticking to it... try anything is my motto..

73, Tim K8WBL


> Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2014 09:48:44 -0400
> From: greenacres113 at charter.net
> To: towertalk at contesting.com
> Subject: [TowerTalk] Verticals
> 
> 
> A lot depends on what your useage is. If you  want to wrk.  mostly 1000 
> mi. or less away stn.s put up a wire. Verticals have lower take off 
> angles. The signal skips over the closer stn.s. We all could give 
> examples of whether we like verticals or not. I've had 6 different 
> verticals over the yr.s. Mono-band & trap verticals. Since I'm a DXer 
> they almost always have wrkd better for me than a wire. A wire at 90' as 
> going to work better than  most trap or mono verticals but few of us can 
> put wire that high.
> Verticals require a radial system.
> Currently I have multiple towers with yagis on some HF bands. I have a 
> HyTower for 40/80 & 160m. Actually the 160m is an L off the HT.Wire & 
> vertical combo.
> Being mostly a DXer if I could have only one antenna it would be a 
> HyTower. The HT is a hybrid. Not a trapped vertical and not a monoband 
> one either. If cost is very important, wire is less expensive than a 
> commercial or homebrew vertical.
> Again it's who you want to work that should be your guide. And your 
> wallet too. Your mileage may vary of course.
> 
> K9IL
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