[TowerTalk] Measuring resonance of a yagi element

[jimlux]

On 4/22/20 7:44 AM, Grant Saviers wrote:
> I got a chuckle out of Jim's comment.  My two A4S trapped tribanders for 
> field day NEVER went together correctly the first try - one tuned for CW 
> the other SSB.  Fortunately, the Will-Burt pneumatic mast made it easier 
> to try again.
> 
> Grant KZ1W
> 
> On 4/22/2020 06:40, jimlux wrote:
>   I suppose I can imagine a field day scenario where someone
>> had marked all the elements with tape or paint (1 band for director, 2 
>> for driven, 3 for reflector, different colors for different bands) and 
>> the tape fell off or paint faded.
>>
>>


W6VIO (JPLARC) field day more than a decade ago, and someone has the C3 
all bundled together, with no instructions, and we're trying to figure 
out which element goes into which hole. Someone in the past had marked 
it in the past, but the markings were only on some elements, and we 
couldn't figure out the pattern.  I don't recall how we figured it out. 
Maybe someone looked at it after we got it together and said "well, that 
looks like how I remember it".  At least we knew it was an interlaced 
design, so you could group the elements by band using their length.

It did work, but one never knows in these situations - if propagation is 
good, and for field day, it's more about "how many people are in the 
zone of propagation" than raw antenna gain or F/B.  That is, you could 
probably do about as well with a dipole, if you're on top of mountain in 
California - it's not like F/B makes much difference when there's nobody 
to the west of you and you're pointing east.