Moleculo, I haven't read anything that suggested placing a top hat right on top of a coil is a good idea. On the contrary I've heard or read the same thing you're telling us here.
My opinion and my question differs with this response based on my working with both the Golden Rod 45 and 50 made by Signal Engineering. Since I was very impressed with both antennas compared to a 1/4 wave whip, I just wondered why someone would make such a claim...that placing a top hat directly over an inductive coil is a no-no.
The idea you present sounds to be very destructive to any good results. Can you describe precisely what happens with the antenna response when setup this way? Your saying that capacitance is canceled by inductance does not describe for me...destruction or getting things screwed up for an RF device. As I understand working with a resonant antenna that is precisely what we want...cancellation of reactance.
My father and I reasoned together that such a setup raised the current distribution higher up the stinger than the continiously loaded whip and that top loading the short stinger should return the affect back to or near full length. This is why I question this claim.
What I saw when testing these two, I thought were positive responses in responding well to both DX and local horizontal signals, without seeming to be ill-affected with known vertical responses. The gain and bandwidth was just as good as the 1/4 wave whip compared, and the match was better. We didn't see any marked difference in local signals, so this shorter antenna worked just as good as the longer one did mounted on my Pop's 1 ton truck in the coastal cotton fields of Souteast Texas.
BTW, I don't think for a minute that Terry would put his seal of approval on anything that was just plane "Snake Oil."
This thread has gone to hell in a handbasket.
Bulldog? Man you are looking real bad.
