[Antennas] Hy-Tower re-configure

Tue Sep 28 19:58:52 EDT 2004

> -----Original Message-----
> Hello group, well, I have had my Hygain Hy-Tower for several 
> years now and have not been very satisfied. I live on a city 
> lot and due to yard size, trees, etc. cannot really put down 
> a good radial system. 

> Then I got more radical, fed the the entire thing with 450 
> ohm ladder line. I have always liked ladder line, used it on 
> most of my zepps, bi-square, etc...the signals came up 
> dramatically but transmitting was still not good. I compared 
> this generally with a friend a couple miles away - he is 
> using a Gap Titan and although receiving results had improved 
> a bunch, transmitting did not. I figured maybe it was 
> looking at the whole tower now as a half-way on 40 instead of 
> just the 1/2 wave so maybe thats why the signals improved.

No, using ladder line caused the line to radiate....you are using a
close by source....ground wave was main component here and you have
plenty of that with the feedline radiating...the HyTower was designed
for 50ohm Unbalanced feed..not open ladder balanced line.
> Last radical change really did the trick, fed the Hy-Tower as 
> a vertical dipole, broke that wire running from the spike and 
> fed 450 ohm there, one to the spike and the other to the 
> tower section, then ran a short piece of 1/2 PVC out at right 
> angle to guide the feedline away from the tower. It does 
> better than my friends GAP now...by an "S" unit so far. 
> Testing is still underway...tuning into a MFJ roller inductor 
> tuner with 4:1 balun. 

Now you have taken the ground system out of the equation and made the
antenna nothing more than a dipole fed with ladder line now set on its
side (a horiz dipole that is 1/2 wave at lowest freq needed and then fed
with ladder line & tuner is the best overall compromise) Since you have
a dipole, the ground radials donot come into play now if they are not
connected to the bottom half of the dipole...The spike is the only
vertical radiating element you have in this arrangement...and since it
is higher in the air and has a dipole element under it, your radiation
is higher and ground losses are much less than a GAP (anything is better
in that case almost :)

> Has anyone tried this as yet? Im sure the dipole 
> configurantion is not balanced but, still, it works well, low 
> noise too, which is something I didnt expect with a vertical. 

I would not expect that either.
> All of the ground mounted verticals Ive owned were generally 
> noisey compared to loops and zepps. The Zepp still beats it 
> on 40 around 50 miles or so, but on 20 meters the received 
> signals are dead even on DX stations, more testing to come... 
> would like anyone response to this attempt or similar experiments.
>> 73, Tim
> K8WBL

IF you had enough copper underneath the HyTower for a counterpoise, I
think you would find it would work much better than your current
config...at least on xmit..
Chris
WB5ITT