[50mhz] 5 over 5 stacking recommendations

[Anthony W. DePrato WA4JQS]

At 11:42 PM 5/5/2007, cboone at earthlink.net wrote:
>Stacking spacing of horizontal elements can be from 0.5 to 1 
>wavelength. There is max gain around .625 or 5/8wl spacing....but 
>its ~ 1db difference overall....a 1 wavelength spacing will reduce 
>RF radiation into the shack (directly below the anntenna).
>(Never heard of the rule using the boom length)
>
>Chris
>WB5ITT
>SNIP

Yes Chris that is an old rule of hand passed down back in the late 
50's and early 60's. and it does work. what you have to remember is 
that any spacing over 10 ft will work. how well it works is the 
point. proper spacing for any yagi has two things to remember . are 
you stacking 1 over 1 or side by side. either way I use to talk to 
Bill W6SI about ants and spacing all the time back in the  60's and 
70's and of course we did not have computers back then so we did or 
math on slide rules and the new pocket wonders. hi hi.. setting up 
ant ranges and so forth. what Bill found was that the fields had to 
just touch and not really overlap. when the H or E planes overlaped 
you  lost  gain and front to back as the lobes would become 
distorted. cushcraft found this with their stacked 11 ele 2 mt beams 
the 22 ele array they sold . the spacing was too close and the lobes 
were many. you never really knew when you had the ant pointed at the 
station you wanted to work. as the signal would have 3 or 4 peaks. 
due to lobes. all depended on how close the station was. if i recall 
we added two foot to the stacking boom and redone the phasing 
harness. it made all the difference . i had it an 90 ft. and FM on 2 
was the new thing then. living in southcentral ky i could talk 
simplex to rome ga daily. something i could not do before Bill helped 
me  remake the ant.
so if you can not get the spacing you really need you can always just 
space them a boom apart.
73 Tony


Anthony W. DePrato  WA4JQS
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