I have been loading my tower with a MonstIR on top at 83' for about 8 years without any issues. I could not ground the end elements as I have the 60/80M dipole option. I tune the MonstIR to 7.050 when on 160M. I can move the 160M resonance quite a bit by lengthening or shortening the MonstIR. I use an omega match at the bottom of the tower with a vacuum relay to switch caps to cover all of 160M. My gamma is at 40' because I have two rotating side mounted beams at 45' and 50'. The gamma is made up of 3 parallel wires the width of Rohn 45 spaced 2' from the tower.
No arcing or sputtering so far. 73, N2TK, Tony -----Original Message----- From: Topband [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Tree Sent: Wednesday, October 14, 2015 6:37 PM To: 160 <[email protected]> Subject: Topband: Loading tower with SteppIR on top Good day all - thought I would share some more experience I have had with loading a tower with a SteppIR on top of it. As I reported last season - I used a loaded tower at NE7D with a DB-18E on it to work the K1N DX pedition. Recently - I acquired a MonsterIR and after talking to ZL3IX, I decided to connect the two elements at each end of the boom to the boom. This is pretty easy to do - contact me off list if you want more data. I am happy to report this all seems to be working with no issues to the normal operation of the beam. The tower is 77 feet tall and works very well with "only" 20 radials on the ground. I will be increasing it to about 40 soon. I also asked SteppIR if they had ever had any customer complain about problems associated with loading a tower with one of their antennas on top - and they have not. Of course - it might just mean the ZL3IX, NE7D and I are the only ones who have tried. :-) I find that the frequency setting for the Monster affects things on 160 meters as expected. I can move the low SWR point up and down the band some. My nominal setting for 1825 kHz is around 9 MHz. My gamma is about 45 feet high - spaced two feet from the tower. I don't know my exact gamma capacitance - but it equates to about 10 feet of RG8 coax used as a capacitor. See you on the band!! I also put up a Hi-Z 4 square for RXing. Oh - and the PreStew is coming up in about 10 days!!! Tree N6TR/7 Hillsboro, OR _________________ Topband Reflector Archives - http://www.contesting.com/_topband _________________ Topband Reflector Archives - http://www.contesting.com/_topband
