[TowerTalk] north

[Earl Morse]

Funny how this wasn't supposed to morph into a thread about finding true north.

Unless you are dealing with pointing lasers its mostly going to be a question of horseshoes and hand grenades where close is good enough.

On a rotor like a Ham IV that has 60 brake notches on it your accuracy is going to be down to 6 degrees right there.  Antenna beam widths are around 50 degrees for 3 dB points.  Larger arrays are going to swing a bit in the breeze as the slack lashes up and the array bounces between brake notches in the rotor.  You are going to peak up the beam heading for whatever sounds best regardless of what the rotor beam heading says on the box in the shack.  No telling exactly how propagation may affect the path for arrival of the signal at your QTH anyway.

Being in a state that was platted I am lucky enough to be able to point the antenna parallel to the street out in front of my house while on top of the tower knowing that it was surveyed north to south.  It's close enough and I don't worry about it.

Have a Merry Christmas and if you are able to fret about your beam heading accuracy then count your blessings because you really don't have anything to worry about.

Earl
N8SS