[Elecraft] OT - R8 antenna evaluation

[Guy Olinger K2AV]

We need to be careful on evaluation of verticals that we forget to consider
the ground.

In the early 60's living in a top floor row house apartment out Connecticut
Avenue in Washington, DC, I had an early equivalent of an R8 style
multiband vertical. I had a pair of radials each for 40/20/15/10. They were
over a copper roof, pretty much in a sea of copper roofs. It was totally
gangbusters. Worked all over the globe on 40 thru 10 with 35 watts output
from an 807 final.

A bit later, moving to the suburbs and a house for impending parenthood, I
relocated the same antenna to the southeast corner of the new back yard
with the feed just a little above the grass. It was a dummy load, even
though now we were running 65 watts from a 6146. The house version had a
much better SWR than the row house so I was pretty much bumfuzzled why it
wasn't getting out. No good scoop on what was wrong, other than the typical
come back from the PVRC club crowd that "verticals radiate poorly in all
directions." It would be a string of decades before I caught on to what was
going on.

With verticals, first work out what you are going to do for the
counterpoise/ground system and THEN worry about the vertical. The latter
may vary you a dB, maybe even approaching 2. The former deals with one,
two, maybe three S units. Huge losses are possible with poor
ground/counterpoise situations.

73, Guy


On Sun, Sep 7, 2014 at 12:53 PM, Jim Brown <jim at audiosystemsgroup.com>
wrote:

> On Sun,9/7/2014 9:36 AM, Robert G Strickland wrote:
>
>> So, I'm not expecting any vertical to equal the SkyHawk, but I would like
>> to get a general feel for the mechanical quality and general performance of
>> the R8.
>>
>
> Some things to study. One costs a few bucks, the others are free.
>
> 1) Buy the report written by N0AX on the testing of verticals that he did
> with K7LXC. Sold by K7LXC's Champion Radio website. Well worth the money.
>
> 2) Study the Power Point slides on my website about Vertical Antenna
> Mounting Height and Antenna Planning for Small HF Stations.
>
> 73, Jim K9YC
>
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