[TowerTalk] Force 12

[Jim Thomson]

Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2017 15:37:14 +0000
From: william radice <k4owr at outlook.com>
To: "towertalk at contesting.com" <towertalk at contesting.com>
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Force 12

:::: people finally realized that Force 12 antennas, while nicely built, simply don't outperform other antennas costing half the price. I've had a lot of them and they all performed poorly.

BILL K4OWR

##    Which f12 antennas did you have that did not perform ?  

##   One item that F12 exceled at was their infamous Boom  to mast pair of plates.  I ran with their concept, and beefed it up some with several HB versions of it.    I used .375 inch thick 
6061-T6  for both the vert + Horz  plate.   Then used the Dx eng super jumbo mast clamps  for the vert plate to mast.... and Dx eng  SS .375 inch  U bolts and  solid al saddles for the 
Horz plate to boom.  Bomb proof.   The beauty of this F12 design is.... the boom can tilt a huge amount.

##  Every other  boom to mast scheme I have seen both present and past is cumbersome and time consuming.   The latest version that f12 used to mount their eles to the boom is  extremely robust.
It uses  .25 inch thick   wrap around  plates, instead of the older f12  multi right angle version.  New  f12 version uses  20 x .25 inch rivets on all 4 x sides. 

Jim  VE7RF