Topband: Great antenna adventure with Murphy

[Bill Cromwell]

Whew!

Day three of my great antenna adventure. This is my third QTH to use
this 135 foot end fed wire. At the other two locations I brought the end
of this particular wire right into the shack where it fastened to the L
network tuner. This time I am running other wire up from the tuner to a
feedthrough in the ceiling above the tuner. In the attic the wire
continues toward the front of the garage to another feedthrough that
goes outside up under the eave. It's like an antenna terminal high on
the side of my garage/workshop/hamshack. I have electric fence
insulators to carry the wire across the attic well away from everything.
The wire, insulators, feedthroughs and spacing are adequate even if I
crank the drive all the way up to the 120 watts my hottest transmitter
can muster. Outside the wire can stand up to the ice we get here once in
a while, too. I am installing a weak link outside so if a tree limb
falls on the wire it will break at the garage's antenna terminal instead
of tearing it out. I'm glad now I thought to do that because Murphy is
punishing me every step of the way. I can imagine what would have
happened without that sacraficial link.

I had hoped to be on the air for the QRP ARCI top band sprint but that
derned Murph!. Now I'm done for the day and I don't have the actual
antenna or counterpoise up yet. I'll be outside after that tomorrow and
never mind if there is a blizzard. Thunderstorm might slow me down.
Blizzard...full speed ahead. I am going to be back on 80 and on 160 as
soon as I get it all installed.

73,

Bill  KU8H

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UR RST IS ... ... ..9 QSB QSB - hw? BK

Topband: Beverage up but maybe has problems comments requested

[wa3mej]

OK    the Beverage is up, transformers installed, and coax hooked up. Let me 
refresh everyone’ memory   -   I put up a 490 ft window line beverage which 
turns out to be headed 30deg magnetic (best I could do on short notice) and it 
has a termination transformer as opposed to the open/short termination.   



  

  I have noticed several things: 

1. I am not impressed with the front to back. I don’t think it is all it 
should be but I have not measured it. 
2. Although I did work YN2CC last night I have not heard but one station 
from Europe . 
3. There appears to be some discrimination off the side of the antenna. The 
8’s, 9’s etc are down as much as 20db. 





  

Having said all of this I started rereading all of the literature and think I 
may have discovered a problem with my transformers.   I noticed that some 
calculated the transformers based directly on the impedance of the line/ surge 
z.   By this I mean they calculated the transformer turns based directly on say 
50 ohms for the primary and   450 ohms for the secondary. 



  

When I designed my transformers I used the rule of 4 like is done with broad 
band transformers so that the turns would be calculated on 200 ohms for the 
primary and 1800 ohms for the secondary.    DID I ERR??   This might be why 
there is no front to back like there should be and maybe even the why I can’t 
seem to hear the Europeans. 



  

Luckily changing the transformers is an easy task. 



  

Comments please ! 



  

Jim WA3MEJ 







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UR RST IS ... ... ..9 QSB QSB - hw? BK