Hi Guy
Your folded counterpoise idea sounds excellent. About 12 years ago, I built a miniature quad antenna for 7MHz that used folded capacitive loading to make two elements, each with sides around 20', using techniques pioneered by G3FPQ. During the course of this experimentation, I learnt that it was possible to make relatively low-loss capacitive loading using folded wires (bent back on themselves) if a minimum spacing was observed. The miniature 40m quad antenna, mounted at 20 metres high, was a very effective antenna. At 7MHz, this minimum spacing transcribed to about 0.005 of a wavelength, or about 9 inches (23 cm). Scaling this up to 1.8MHz, this gave a spacing of about one metre between the folded wires and I built my late father Ossie G0TYJ a very effective folded 160m antenna and counterpoise that fitted into a very small space, using this technique. I would be very interested - as am sure other users of this reflector would be - on what spacing you use between the folded wires on your counterpoise system. If you have found you can use a spacing of less than a metre between the wires, this would be good news to myself and others! One metre spacing was rather cumbersome. Vy 73 Steve, VK6VZ (ex-G3ZZD) ------------------------------- Guy, K2AV wrote: SNIP >Remember that the current entering the FCP is set by the radiating wire because the apparent series resistance in the FCP is so low relative to the radiation resistance of the vertical radiator. The FCP's beginning current would be the same amplitude as the beginning current on the two radials. Set our imaginary power drive to get one ampere at the base of the antenna in both cases. Counting FCP segments 1 through 5. 33 feet per segment. Directions used are for illustration only. 1: center to 33 feet east 2: 33 feet east back to center 3: center to 33 feet west 4: 33 feet west back to center 5: center to 33 feet east and end insulator. Segments 2 through 5 carry the typical cosine current curve of a 0 to 90 degrees quarter wavelength. This is enforced working backward from the end insulator. Segment 1 has the cosine of -22.5 degrees to 0 degrees. The current max is at the connection between segments 1 and _______________________________________________ UR RST IS ... ... ..9 QSB QSB - hw? BK
