Marconi fixed his Wolf .50_11m 1/2 wave

[Marconi]

Well I haven't tested this one yet, it has been broken for some years. I got it out and fix the bolt connecting the bottom tuning ring to the mounting sleeve and it is work again.

As usual it is work with a bad tune at 14', but I haven't tried to tune it yet. It is working DX and local pretty good and I have a video to support it is working on receive very well, albeit doesn't Tx very well locally operating with an SWR over 2.00:1 on almost all frequencies in 11 meters from 25.810 to 28.205. Here is my bandwidth curve that looks pretty bad. You watch my video and it will make you wonder if antenna's really are tropical or not in the real world. Is this another case where theory and the real world don't necessarily jive together, and can be always be sure when we use this reference so categorically in our arguments?

Here is a couple of views of the antenna on a 14' mast:





Here is the bandwidth curve that shows a very bad match and even so the antenna is very responsive. So consider what that means when you think an antenna always has to have a perfectly flat match in order to work good.

View attachment Wolf .50_11m bandwidth curve 031211.pdf

 

[HomerBB]

Puts me in mind of my marriage. terrible match, but boy are there times when it works so good!

 

[Marconi]

Here are my follow up videos for my post above...using the Wolf .50_11m vertical 1/2 wave without radials, my Gain Master, and my Marconi 4x.

Check both out and tell me if antennas are always reciprocal and how important matching really is to antenna efficiency in the real world.

1st video

YouTube - Marconi trying out his old Wolf .50_11m vertical similar to the old Ringo by HyGain #1

2nd video

YouTube - Marconi trying out his old Wolf .50_11m vertical similar to the old Ringo by HyGain #2

3rd video

YouTube - Marconi trying out his old Wolf .50_11m vertical similar to the old Ringo by HyGain #3

Video #4

YouTube - Marconi trying out his old Wolf .50_11m vertical similar to the old Ringo by HyGain


Goggle map showing mileage to the last contact...in Nederland Texas around 100 miles to the East of my location. I was on the Gain Master:

Houston, TX 77018 to Nederland, TX - Google Maps

You guys will have to forgive me for getting the video # corn'fused.

 

[Marconi]

My post above has new material added. I discovered I had two more video's showing the mismatch affect with the Wolf .50_11m antenna.

If you notice the TX with the antenna is notably weak, but the receive is re-soundingly good. If antennas are truly reciprocal, then why do I see this happen in the video with a badly tuned antenna? Could this also be like the gain charts that express...gain over a perfect ground...that we are all familiar with...a factor that we never take in to account like some many other ideas concerning theory?

Homer, this is on of the recent request I asked you to consider doing when you got your 5/8 wave or the Vector rebuilt and in case either showed a bad match initially. I asked you to do some signal reports anyway and see how your response was compared to what I see often under similar circumstances.

 

[bob85]

eddie,
the wolf is notably down on rx compared to the gm and marconi, a 1.8:1 mismatch won't cause that much of a difference,
the poor tx report is clearly not due to a small missmatch providing your radio does not back down its output with high vswr,

your buddy larry still looks and sounds multipath/skippy to me , hes talking about strange conditions and his sig is up and down like a fiddlers elbow,

something to consider is the wolf is not decoupled nor does it have radials so its got mast/feedline radiation for which they are well known, it possibly has a higher radiation angle that only works well one way between you and larry due to the ionosphere at the time of the test,
whenever you have skip, conditions are often not reciprocal even one way skip is not that uncommon, the lumpy n bumpy ionosphere can make poor antennas shine and make one way skippers out of the best antennas,

under zero skip conditions i have never used an antenna with a reasonable match that good ears and no lips or the other way around

 

[HomerBB]

Watching video 2 it seems to me the Wolf does least well, and the Marconi does as good as, and sometimes better than the GM.
3rd video still show Marconi doing a bit better.
4th video finally shows the GainMaster doing the best. It seems the requirements for best performance depends on the distance being received. The unkown station in video4 treats the GM best, whereas the Nederland station was kinder to the Marconi. I can only imagine how well the Wolf will do when at either of the heights of the other two.

 

[HomerBB]

Homer, this is on of the recent request I asked you to consider doing when you got your 5/8 wave or the Vector rebuilt and in case either showed a bad match initially. I asked you to do some signal reports anyway and see how your response was compared to what I see often under similar circumstances.

This is a thing I'll have to work toward. Putting up the 4 element beam has taken the tower to different usage, but I am resourceful and will have a temporary tip over mast system working in now time. Weather will only get better, so I should be able to do what I need to soon.

I did put the Qv4k up for a couple days, and it did have poor tune, and horrible performance after working the AP. I'll be using the same vertical on both the Qv4k and the 5/8 shortening and lengthening it each time I slip it onto the different bottom cone/radial systems. Everything will be interchangeable in a matter of minutes due to my unique way of mechanically designing the lower sections of my antennas from retail store materials.
I'll git er dun for ya.

 

[Marconi]

eddie,
the wolf is notably down on rx compared to the gm and marconi, a 1.8:1 mismatch won't cause that much of a difference,
the poor tx report is clearly not due to a small mismatch providing your radio does not back down its output with high vswr,

your buddy larry still looks and sounds multipath/skippy to me , hes talking about strange conditions and his sig is up and down like a fiddlers elbow,

something to consider is the wolf is not decoupled nor does it have radials so its got mast/feedline radiation for which they are well known, it possibly has a higher radiation angle that only works well one way between you and larry due to the ionosphere at the time of the test,
whenever you have skip, conditions are often not reciprocal even one way skip is not that uncommon, the lumpy n bumpy ionosphere can make poor antennas shine and make one way skippers out of the best antennas,

under zero skip conditions i have never used an antenna with a reasonable match that good ears and no lips or the other way around

I understand Bob, I still have many unanswered questions for "WHY". I also think the audio sounds you hear from Larry in particular are strange sounding in the videos, and you may be right, but he and others sound more normal sitting in front of my radio. as least to these old ears of mine. Some guys sound normal and other guys sound like the Munchkin people in the Wizard of OZ movie. I think a lot of the audio quality or lack of quality has to do with frequency variables on sideband, but you are right yesterday AM was notably a bad time to be testing in my area for the reasons you mentioned. The Wolf antenna was just put up and I was hoping for the best in conditions to test another theory I have regarding tune. Yesterday was not really a test like my previous testing, either alone or side-by-side. However I was surprised to note similar results from the past with the Wolf in that state of bad tune, and you would choose the lowest reading of 1.8:1 SWR using my SWR bandwidth curve to base you contention. I you will check the Analyzer bandwidth where I was working the antenna you will note the SWR was at least around the 2.36> SWR read with the analyzer.

In any other situation similar, you would be the first to tell us "...you can't really tell the true SWR state of affairs using and inline meter and would recommend using an analyzer." My radio is not a dependable source of info either, but if you look at the video where I TX on the Wolf you may note that the SWR indicated is at least 2:1 and as high as 3:1. Maybe I'll try and tune that old bugger to 4-5:1 and see what happens. I may well be out of my mind, but I've seen such results with that Wolf .50_11m antenna being out of tune before, and I was amazed then and now...seeing similar results again. I'm also sure that if I ever talked about this 'AT' to anyone, it was you. I would think twice about trying to explain this far fetched idea to most others. It goes against what I've always thought about the tuned state of my antennas, but on seeing this bad tune and the antenna remaining responsive to RX signals, it got me to thinking. I guess the old saying that: "...thinking can be dangerous." I'm still wondering about antennas by nature being reciprocal, and it seems nobody is touching my statement above in this regard.

I think I'll spend a few more days trying to prove this point is as you suggest by the book, or as I see and suspect in a real life application. As long as the antenna tune doesn't dramatically cut the radio power back, IMO it seems the tune just doesn't make that much of a difference with the natural antenna effectivness...unless it's really way off base. Right now I think the depressed TX signals are due to the Wolf being close to my roof which anyone can easily see in my video showing the images. I've seen this happen before before and I've discussed that with you directly too. I know, others will argue that my roof as constructed should have minimal affects, but I see more in my real life experience. Others, including you, might also dispute my issues in this regard, but none in this bunch have yet or will in the near future I'm sure.

I find this antenna is way low in frequency and riddled with reactance, even though the Jazzsinger will jump my case that I'm wrong for some rime or reason having to do with my idea of resonance. I'm not trying to be scientific here or develop a new world theory for RF. I'm just wondering "WHY" I see what I see. So, I think I'll keep this idea and any more testing I do under my hat, cause I sure don't want to get any more controversy started than already exists.

I always say, if you haven't tried it, then think about it. I just ask folks to consider and help me try and answer some questions I have.

Bob, an example is...did you ever try my tuning idea with your I-10K where I claim to have solved the riddle we find with resonance and resistance being at different frequency points with this antenna, where I also talked about a notable "dip" in the tune? Nope, I don't think so, or you would have surely said something before now. I also believe that Jay was right and he told us what to do and watch out for in his manual, For the first time in my experience, I find my I-10K match the best, the A99 and the Gain Master, and whooped all the rest.

 

[bob85]

i can't tell you why you are seeing what you see eddie other than what i have suggested, your tests are not what we see here as we have discussed before, an a99 gets its ass handed to it by longer antennas unless we are talking skip where the angle of the dangle means conditions in the ionosphere dictate which works best at any given time, if we have no skip we have no problem seeing which antenna is where in the pecking order, some will say a 5/8 is a 5/8 is a 5/8a but thats not true here,
there is a pecking order even between different 5/8waves,

you have much more skip activity than i do at this time in the cycle,
mother nature can throw a spanner in the works just when you need flat conditions for testing you get short hop skip from france and unstable multipath effects locally,

i did try retuning the i10k to see if i could bring resonance up to the same frequency as best vswr but ended back exactly where i started, im not saying it can or cannot be done, i did not see the changes in signal that i see when tuning a sigma style antenna,


i wish i could stick any old antenna up and get the same results as big ugly antennas i would stick an a99 as high as i could, unfortunately its not like that here

 

[Marconi]

This is a thing I'll have to work toward. Putting up the 4 element beam has taken the tower to different usage, but I am resourceful and will have a temporary tip over mast system working in now time. Weather will only get better, so I should be able to do what I need to soon.

I did put the Qv4k up for a couple days, and it did have poor tune, and horrible performance after working the AP. I'll be using the same vertical on both the Qv4k and the 5/8 shortening and lengthening it each time I slip it onto the different bottom cone/radial systems. Everything will be interchangeable in a matter of minutes due to my unique way of mechanically designing the lower sections of my antennas from retail store materials.
I'll git er dun for ya.

I know you'll get-er-dun Homer. I have confidence in you. However, I may find that I'm wrong about the tune having very little affect on performance when I get the Wolf .50 up high enough so it's not so ill-affected by my roof.

Today I tuned on it a bit trying to better understand the cause and affect of moving different elements in the tuning process. It looks like maybe when the tune gets bad due to inductive reactance the antenna responds in one manner (TX's fair & RX poor), and when it gets bad with capacitive reactance it responds in another manner (with TX poor & RX good).

This strange response may be similar to the actions of a reflector on a multi-element beam to some degree and why I see a myriad of different responses from no rejection, to no apparent gain, to even a form of omni-directional affect, that is terrible with a beam's response. BTW, I hear this omni-directional response talked about among guys in my group of sideband contacts sometimes. I'll sure have to check this out soon.

I'm also reminded of the situation I had sometime back selling some LW-150's to three guys, and two guys had bad luck in there construction and had no ears, because they made them as long as the tubing would go.

Something strange is going on, but I'll figure it out. Right now, I'm thinking I was wrong about a bad tune not making that much of a difference in performance as long as the tune was less than about 3.00:1 SWR.

I've got my Wolf set between 3.00:1 and 4.00:1, and I will be testing it in both conditions or reactance on tomorrow. This is not an important issue in the general scheme of things, but it might be interesting to know or realize, and try and understand.

Bob, I just looked at video #4 on my post above and I saw Grampa getn' all excited when Doug the "Professional CB'er" of our group, started talking high tech theory. I'm still laughing at Grampa, acting a fool as he shouts at his radio, like he's in front of a class of school kids that are acting up. I have to start watching my videos all the way through...before I post em' on YouTube. Sorry for that guys.

That said however, if you look at parts of the video where I was able to catch some of the guy's talking long enough to switch between all three antennas, it is remarkable that the Wolf, with its bad tune and low height, works as well as it does with my RX contacts in the video. It is obvious how bad it works with the TX based on a few reports, and some silence from a couple of others.

I have the antenna where I can get it up to about 20' feet to the base now, so the bottom is about 3' feet above the peak of my roof, and maybe it will perform a little better to some of these guys on TX tomorrow, in spite of the bad tune which is worse, on purpose, than it was yesterday. The thing I will have to watch for tomorrow will be my radios cut-back circuit cutting the signals down. I may use my TS570D and the tuner in order to try and keep the output the same in this test. Plus the light when out on my Galaxy DX2547.

 

[bob85]

eddie,
you made me laugh when you started shouting at the radio, no need to apologise, im sure we have all ranted at the radio but we don't record and post it up for others to hear lol,

i don't think a less than perfect vswr makes a huge difference in signal with most single element verticals so long as its not so poor that your radio is throttling back and your coax is not very long,
some radios will likely do better with slightly capacitively reactive loads and others inductively reactive loads,
not all radios are tuned to deliver their maximum power into a 50ohm load @13.8v which introduces more variables,

if you are talking local without skip, height is might,
i would expect the lower antenna partially hidden behind the house to lose out significantly,

if you are talking via the ionosphere then height is not nearly as important so long as you have the right takeoff angle for the prevailing ionospheric conditions,
i know guys that have worked the world from a hole in the ground, they can talk 12,000 miles on 27mhz but can't talk much over 25 miles locally,
a poor local performer can easily outperform a better antenna under the right conditions,

if a ringo mounted at 10ft gave anywhere near as strong a signal as a sigma at 40ft i would strongly suspect i had an ionospheric path that favoured the ringo

 

[Marconi]

eddie,
you made me laugh when you started shouting at the radio, no need to apologies, im sure we have all ranted at the radio but we don't record and post it up for others to hear lol,

i don't think a less than perfect vswr makes a huge difference in signal with most single element verticals so long as its not so poor that your radio is throttling back and your coax is not very long, some radios will likely do better with slightly capacitively reactive loads and others inductively reactive loads, not all radios are tuned to deliver their maximum power into a 50ohm load @13.8v which introduces more variables,

if you are talking local without skip, height is might, i would expect the lower antenna partially hidden behind the house to lose out significantly, if you are talking via the ionosphere then height is not nearly as important so long as you have the right takeoff angle for the prevailing ionospheric conditions, i know guys that have worked the world from a hole in the ground, they can talk 12,000 miles on 27mhz but can't talk much over 25 miles locally, a poor local performer can easily outperform a better antenna under the right conditions,

if a ringo mounted at 10ft gave anywhere near as strong a signal as a sigma at 40ft i would strongly suspect i had an ionospheric path that favoured the ringo

Bob that may be exactly what is going on too. For all you sports fans out there, we can't see RF and to speculate where and what these little particles of energy are doing can be misleading. A description of RF is at best, a figment of our imagination and the take off angle is an enigma of sorts use by CB'rs to signify where or how an antenna will radiate, and the limitation noted in the theoretical reference is so tiny of a spot that its use would leave out 99.9999% of radiation from any antennas where the reference was used. That said the term TOA is typically used in reference to an antenna in free space, and when over real Earth, things tend to change. Even our referencing this TOA getting lower when increasing the height of an antenna is somewhat misleading as to the magnitude of the change. It is a true statement, but the magnitude of change is really very small until you get to several multiples of a wavelength, and with 11 meters, one wavelength is about the limit in most cases. So, there just isn't really much change in the angle associated with TOA, and for sure when raising an antenna within a 1-2 wavelength range. But, we understand what is being said when these terms are used so willy-nilly in conversation.



The Wolf is set with Inductive loading at 27.395 mhz.