[80m] 4 square

[Billy Cox]

> How does DEtuning the towers help? I would think that tuning them all to
> the same frequency would be more important to keeping a consistant
> pattern.
>
> Won't elements on slightly different frequencies work as parasitic
> elements? Or am I missing something?

They could ... but what you want to do is make the other towers
and other antennas "look invisible" to the array ... too many times
folks put too many antennas in too little an area ... and then wonder
why the actual performance suffers so badly.

The various modeling programs, with proper models, will really
open one's eyes to what is going on as to interactions and such.

I have two of the MFJ-931 units here for de-tuning the towers
this spring ... why ?

Example ? When I had a 40' tower with a 2 EL Quad for my SA/CARIB
antenna, the array was not really impacted. When I raised that tower to
50', and added two large yagis ... the pattern of the array to the SE went
to the pits ... Why ? The 50' is SE of the SE corner of the array and now
electrically "looks" like a reflector on 80m ... not good ...

To your other point, yes ... detuning the towers to be "invisible" on
80m could lead possibly to other problems on other bands ...

73 Billy AA4NU