[TowerTalk] first post

[Jim Brown]

On 6/6/2014 8:29 AM, W0MU Mike Fatchett wrote:
> Money has nothing to do with selecting a SteppIR.
>
> Please show me one antenna that can cover all bands 40-6 wiith NO 
> interaction between the other bands.  An antenna that is optimized for 
> each band it is on and does not have 23 other element flapping in the 
> wind that are un-needed at any given time.  Show me another antenna 
> that can be switched to bi directional mode or 180 in seconds? 

I'm very pleased with the original 3-el SteppIR (20M - 6M) that I've had 
up at 120 ft for going on 5 years. No problems that I can blame on the 
antenna, and it works very well for me. I do extensive contesting, and 
some DXing. The antenna changes bands reasonably quickly, and the 
reversing and bi-directional features are VERY useful when contesting. 
The bi-directional feature also saves a lot of rotator action -- I 
rarely rotate the antenna more than 120 degrees.

I'm a member of two big clubs here in the SF Bay area -- the Northern CA 
Contest Club, and Northern CA DX Club, a combined membership of about 
600, with a fair number of SteppIRs in the air. I've been part of the 
ground crew for a half dozen or so installs, and monitored the reflector 
traffic paying attention to issues. From that perspective, I'd offer 
these observations.

1) As a company, SteppIR seems to work out the kinks in their products 
several years into production. I would not buy, nor would I recommend, 
any of their products that isn't "mature."  One example of a major kink 
is that they had to use an anternate supplier for the rubber boots that 
seal the tubes to the boom, and those substitute parts degraded and 
failed over time with exposure to UV. Another example is that my 
neighbor had three bad motor assemblies on his big DB steppIR within the 
first six months or so.

2) SteppIR is NOT a great company for service. That neighbor with the 
three bad EHUs waited two months for repair of the first one, then two 
more months for the other two.

3) SteppIR designs seem to be excellent from an RF performance point of 
view -- if you spend the time to model them, it's clear that they 
perform as well as monobanders having the same number of elements and 
boom lengths. (Remember that the gain of an antenna correlates strongly 
with increasing boom length.)

4) I've seen nothing to indicate that SteppIRs are less robust than 
other antennas of comparable size and cost.

5) The straight 2-el, 3-el, and 4-el SteppIRs are a very mature design, 
but are also quite light weight. Even a weakling like me can handle a 
2-el by myself, and the 3-el is also quite manageable. They also provide 
a lot less wind load than typical tri-banders.

All good antennas are expensive, and much of the cost is getting them 
high enough to work well. A SAFE tower installation is expensive -- 
there's the tower itself, the concrete base, rated hardware, guys, guy 
anchors, the labor to build it. And then there's the rotator, the 
control and RF cables, and the antenna itself. In most installations, 
the cost of the antenna itself is 20% or less of the total cost.

If I were going to add another antenna for the higher bands, it would be 
either another straight SteppIR, a Force12 design, or something from 
Innovantenna. (I have dipoles at 35 ft for 30M, and at 120 ft for 40 and 
80).

73, Jim K9YC