Regarding guesstimates, at Home Depot a customer comes in with his total square feet of flooring space wanting carpet. Based on those square feet a tentative cost for his flooring and installation is calculated. However it is stressed that these preliminary numbers are not binding. Not until an on premises measure and inspection of the actual floor plan can a real cost be nailed down. Too many variables are at work. The way the floor is shaped, multi-levels, stairways, trim, transistions, etc. The customer is told he is looking at a guesstimate.
Disregard the error I made in naming this series of models. It is not an Open Sleeve design...it is a Skeleton Sleeve (SS) I''m modeling here. I'm not going to go back and change all the names.
Homer, thanks for your perspective here. It got me to thinking, why I had a feeling that this Skeleton Sleeve model surprised me at just about every turn. I'm not even sure my model is close to what was represented in the ARRL article at 2 meters, or if I figured right in the take-off for the dimensions I ended up with.
The model worked pretty good at 146 MHz, but after scaling I had to make adjustments on the radial lengths and spacing as well as test every move for the radiator length. This antenna does not look to me to be so easy as indicated in the article. At 2.48:1 ratio of radials to radiator...changing ratio was easy compared to doing this design in real life. I did not plan this ratio, it is what I ended up with after doing many iterations trying for a good match. I don't remember if I every checked the Average Gain on these models, but that would change the results if the AGT turns out to be out of a good range not = 1.
This is not an antenna for beginners nor will it be easy to build unless you have all the specific dimensions to start. You will be able to adjust the radiator and the radial length, but how will you adjust the spacing without building another hub plate? Maybe with 11 meters and 21/2 feet one could drill a series of holes for all the likely adjustments on the radial hub plate. IMO, adjusting is not going to happen, because the spacing, which is going to be fixed, is not likely to be set to adjust.
When I saw the first pattern for the antenna that was close to a match...I said this is no Sigma4.
The model in the book was predicting resonance at 146 MHz. So, I had a thought that scaling the model to 27 Mhz might present some problems with the size of parts. Tubing is one thing, but a large hub bracket at 2 meters will really be large at 11 meters. At 11 meters I have a hub that is 2.46' feet square, what to do?
I think Bob saw in this article an issue regarding ratios and asked is this similar to the way the S4 design works.
Do I keep the wire size and scale the length only?
I may have to pull a trick out of the bag to do this. hehe!
Do I change the wire size to wire gauge so the scaling does not change in the process?
Or do I pay it no mind and let the cards fall where they may and just scale the whole thing?
1. The PDF file below shows an image of how large the big plate bracket is after scaling from 2 meters.
2. or overlays of the Skeleton Sleeve pattern vs. NV4K, vs. 1/2 wave J-Pole. Here we see how erratic the Skeleton Sleeve is on changing height.
We also see the J-Pole patterns at various heights and the NV4K look very similar...while the SS is off in the weeds and changes radically as the height is changed.
Also, the match for the NV4K and the J-Pole change very little as the antennas are raised higher, while the Skeleton Sleeve does change enough to be noticed as a difference.
This might help explain why Sirio referrers to their New Vector 4000 as a "coaxial J-Pole"...
I see the patterns are similar...if that distinction means anything?
Do we still have any "Never a J-Pole" followers still with us?