[Elecraft] [K3] KAT3 and 160 with 40m long doublet

[WILLIS COOKE]

Jim, a large iron deposit lies north and west of Chicago, so verticals work very 
well in many areas around Chicago.  I live on the Texas Gulf Coast which is salt 
laden gumbo from an ancient sea and verticals work very well here.  I don't know 
about Stephen's area of the UK, but I will easily accept his experience that 
verticals don't work well there.
 Willis 'Cookie' Cooke 
K5EWJ 




________________________________
From: Jim Brown <jim at audiosystemsgroup.com>
To: elecraft at mailman.qth.net
Sent: Sun, January 2, 2011 3:42:12 PM
Subject: Re: [Elecraft] [K3] KAT3 and 160 with 40m long doublet

On 1/2/2011 12:03 PM, Stephen Prior wrote:
> I don't have a good enough ground to feed the antenna as a Marconi so my
> options other than lengthening the antenna are rather limited.

Don't give up so easily.  In Chicago, I used a big wrought iron fence 
plus a dozen or so 30 ft long wires as counterpoise for a Marconi; KK9H 
has used the HVAC ducts in his home.  ANY counterpoise is better than NO 
counterpoise.  In another installation, I've run as many fairly short 
wires as I could from the base of the antenna, connected them together, 
and to the coax shield.  Was it as good as 70 quarter-wave radials?  Of 
course not. Did the antenna work well enough for me to have a lot of 
fun?  Yup!

My Marconi was a 100 ft long center-fed dipole with loading coils to 
resonate it on 80M. Just for fun, I tried loading it as a dipole on 160. 
Performance was wretched. Using it as a Marconi gave me signal reports 
at least 10dB better.

73, Jim K9YC
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