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best 11meter vertical ever, period.

You're right Booth Monster and BigMac with special sauce got one right too finally. Sometimes we just have to do with what life presents to us, but it sure would be nice not to have to try and chase down the signals I was getting.

I bet you guys all had a teacher or two that tried her/his best to get ya'll to pay attention in class. I'll bet when the teacher asked Booty and Mac why they weren't in school the day before, Booty probably said something like, "...I couldn't find my shoes," and Macmobile13 was saying to himself, "...zzzzzzzzzzz:sleep: what'ed she say? :confused: zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

I tried using a beacon in my testing too, and most guys likely didn't give that a second glance either. That was probably because I wasn't able to explain why we didn't see the Imax and my Old Top One on the video respond to the beacon right before our very eyes when it was loud and clear on my Gain Master or whatever other antenna I had up at the time.

I even videoed my raising my Top One hoping the video would show the signal going up, but that didn't happen either. If anything the signal was lower.

It was suggested that it was a local device (toy, remote computer device, temp guage, telephone, etc.) to my local station making that signal, but now if has stopped. The suggested culprits named above don't typically just stop working. In addition the signals changed during this period to three distinct and repeatable frequencies all in the 11 meter band over many days, and it showed me different signal strength for all three frequencies during each period of operation.
 
sigma 4 style thoughts and ideas

Hi Guys, my passion for cb has been recently rekindled, it's been many years but i did once own an original sigma 4, i had also owned a fake one amongst many other antenna.
I have a few questions if anyone can help.
I am building a copy with parts i have lying around but there are a few things i am not sure about, i am going to build a gamma match but i don't know the exact dimensions of the parts, does anybody know the length of the tube and rod? Must they both be aluminum? Even if the gamma match must be aluminum could the basket be made out of soldered copper tube?
I was going to make a version from wire and suspend it between two 40M pine trees but then found that i had a large glass fiber wind surfer mast and an extendable fishing pole that fits exactly in the end, i can achieve the length required and was planning on using aluminum or copper wire, to be hung on the outside (rather than inside) of the fiberglass tubes (to avoid some shielding).
So basically the questions are:
1? Gamma match dimensions, and is alu necessary? (also is there a good source for a teflon sleeve or equivalent)?
2? Can copper be used as a basket or must it be made from alu?
3? Can the main 27' 7" radiator be copper wire? or must this also be alu?
4? Does anybody know of any interesting mods. other than the obviouse waterproofing and filing the corners of the gamma match etc?
5? Since reading some more on this forum i am wondering if a thicker radiator above the basket would benefit rather than a thin wire?

So with the glass fiber poles i should be able to get the antennae to the top of the largest 50M pine tree just behind the shack although i am probably barking up the wrong tree since i live at 1200M almost at the bottom of a narrow valley on a fairly steep hillside surrounded by 3000-4000M peaks
James
 
my ShakeSpear Pogo Stick is the best to me because it was FREE its old falling apart but it works:) we had 60MPH winds and it didnt budge w/o guywires too. tuning is easy. it fell over a few weeks ago slammed the roof and the tip broke/cracked 3' of it taped it with white tape and its still working :)
 
Best Antenna

I brought a MACO 5/8 a IMAX 2000 a 10K and a A99 installed 2 antennas at a time with 100' of the same type Coax RG8U. at 18' and at 36' to the bottom. When out 25 miles to a test spot I used an took readings between each 2 antennas on a A/B switch at the QTH, then took down on of the antennas and replaced it with another antenna then compared those 2 antennas, then took down the second antenna and replaced it with the third antenna.
18' to the bottom
1. 10K
2. A99
3. MACO 5/8
4. IMAX 2000
36' to the bottom
1. A99
2. IMAX 2000 MACO 5/8 same signal reading
3. could not get the I-10K up to 36' to the bottom but did get it to 24' and it did slightly better than the IMAX an the MACO that were at the 36' level

I live in AZ and the soil here is not the best for ground wave reflection compared to other places I have lived. I started with the A99 when I put up my CB station and am back using it again, I can get it up in the air and it stays up there and deals with the wind well. If I had a tower would like to put the I-10K up at 40' for the CB band and see what the results would be, Jay built this antenna to last a very long time and think it weighs around 20 lbs.
 
bob85 said:
chief/freecell/228 i enjoy reading and trying to understand all your posts, you got me thinking antennas again just when i need to be sleeping, hope we can come to some agreement on this heated debate,its not going away so here goes.

things i would like answers to?
it states in the patent that the hoop interconnecting the flaired rods is merely to broadband the antenna while at the same time reducing the physical length of the rods so lets imagine the antenna uses just straight rods with no hoop for a moment, at what point as we increase the angle between radiator and rods do the said rods become groundplanes? at 90 degrees they are groundplanes we can agree, as we raise them chief says they become something other than groundplanes freecell and 228 say they are still groundplanes?

it states clearly in the patent that at the 10 degrees angle the antenna has a gain of 2.2db over a dipole wheras the 5/8 has 1.2db approx, it also states that with an increased angle ( rod tips about 9 feet appart ) gain is increased by another 1/2 db or so with even higher gain possible at angles greater than this but no specific angle is mentioned, now why would the designer tell chief that the 5/8 was the better antenna because of takeoff angle, if the gain is higher on the 3/4 then the radiation angle would i think have to be higher too for the 5/8 to beat it, then why do all my and my friends tests show the sigma4 style to be stronger locally and at distance than our regular 5/8 antennas?,

why does using 4 rods rather than 3 increase useable bandwidth on both the 3/4 and 7/8 length radiator?

why does increasing the radiator length to 32 feet approx increase signal strength over all distances out to around 90 miles which is my max talking distance from my present location and at least 110 miles from my parents house?

why does moving the gamma tapping point and retuning by altering gamma and radiator length for a low vswr while monitoring distant reliable stations ( houres of work ) allow an increase in signal strength on tx and rx by as much as almost 1.5 s units ( measured on yaesu ft990's ) over the factory tapping point and tuning instructions, the gains are permanent and more than the difference between our 5/8 and the 7/8 locally by almost 1s unit,
i did not tell my buddy what to expect just that he should try this and report back with what he found, i pointed him in the right direction he saw a tiny increase and found himself out every night tuning untill he got it optimal, is it coincidental that we both found a similar increase using ft990's or is there some other explanation to it??, unbeknown to us a local ham using an avanti 3/4 on 10mtrs was listening to us and decided to lengthen his antenna to 7/8 and repeat what he had heared us talking about, weeks later he broke in on our groupe and reported almost 1 s unit gain, he thanked us saying he would never have believed the day would come when a couple of cbers taught him something usefull about antennas.
Click to expand...

bob85 can you share your dimensions so some of us can modify or build one? i know it might be different for someone else due to difference in ground or mounting height but at least it would be a ball park close place to start
 
i don't have exact dimentions nor do i believe that we all need the same dimentions, 4 radials and somewhere around 30ft from hub to tip is what works best here, experiment either side of that with signals out at your fringes, test with one antenna, fm or cw and NO skip:)

my next one may not have a gamma :w00t:
 
so in the last 5 or 6 years you found it's better at 30' tall then 32' like you used to have yours?
 
"why does moving the gamma tapping point and retuning by altering gamma and radiator length for a low vswr while monitoring distant reliable stations ( houres of work ) allow an increase in signal strength on tx and rx by as much as almost 1.5 s units ( measured on yaesu ft990's ) over the factory tapping point and tuning instructions, the gains are permanent and more than the difference between our 5/8 and the 7/8 locally by almost 1s unit"

bob , you know i gotta ask what your optimum tap point is (y) ive just used 27 inches so far . i'm still having fun with mine . got my extra tubing and got the antenna apart making a few changes (hopefully upgrades) . now i've got nine 6 ft sections of tubing for the vertical . 4 will be used to double wall the the two lower sections and the other 5 will allow me to play at 36 ft plus . FWIU 36 ft is too long for these on the cb band , but one day i might get a hammy ticket and can make use of the extra potential vertical length .
 
32ft was too long, especially if the antenna is not close to the ground and does not use a skinny vector radiator, i used the vector basket on an extended avanti radiator, i have no idea if the new longer radial shorter radiator setup works better or not untill i try it,

booty, all i can tell you about my tap setting is that it was lower than the factory setting, been using the i10k for about 6 years without any problems and without been able to talk to stations i could on the vector hybrid,
read the early sigma posts on here to discover what i thought could be happening by altering the length, im still no wiser as to why we saw what we did but dozens of tests over 30 years against the best cb antennas available prove to me and locals that CEBIK and the patent were correct and the models are not, maybe its just my location skewing the results, the gainmaster can't equal the i10k where i use my antenna while others see the opposite :D
 
bob85 said:
32ft was too long, especially if the antenna is not close to the ground and does not use a skinny vector radiator, i used the vector basket on an extended avanti radiator, i have no idea if the new longer radial shorter radiator setup works better or not untill i try it,

booty, all i can tell you about my tap setting is that it was lower than the factory setting, been using the i10k for about 6 years without any problems and without been able to talk to stations i could on the vector hybrid,
read the early sigma posts on here to discover what i thought could be happening by altering the length, im still no wiser as to why we saw what we did but dozens of tests over 30 years against the best cb antennas available prove to me and locals that CEBIK and the patent were correct and the models are not, maybe its just my location skewing the results, the gainmaster can't equal the i10k where i use my antenna while others see the opposite :D
Click to expand...
what was your gainmaster setup like? why aren't you using your hybrid?
 

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