Cecil Moore wrote in message ...
Brian Kelly wrote:
OK , I got off on the wrong foot, this is more better. Tnx for the
clarification. Now back to Autocad so that I can enshrine it for
posterity . .

Don't bother with the caps. I was 180 degrees out of phase. Try
dual 3-30 microhenry rotary coils instead ... sorry about that.

Lets not throw the baby out with the washwater, this ain't over Cecil.
In fact it opens up possibilities. Fact is that very few ops who get
on 80/75 use anywhere near the entire 3.5-4.0 segement, it's a
function of one's specific interests and reasons for using the band.
In my own case I'm a basically a DXer thus my only real interest is in
just the 3.50-3.55 and 3.70-3.85 Mhz slices of the band. And in being
able to have a single, simple antenna which presents low feedpoint
SWRs in those frequency ranges. Which rules out conventional dipoles
and most of the rest of it's relatives.

In the case of your 110 foot flattop with it's 110 foot feedline and
for my specific purposes the "tuner" would be a pair of inline lo-loss
fixed coils with taps which are selectable with a simple two pole
two-position ceramic rotary switch. Or make it a three pole switch and
be able to ground the antenna. Three taps yields three slices, etc. A
tuner like that would be a whole bunch easier to build and use and
would require much less mechanical claptrap than the original pair of
variable caps scheme requires.

However if using your 110 foot run of ladderline and coils
configuration is a hassle but a 44 foot feedline would work Mr.
Boyle's design can be used to get the same basic performance results
with the caps. The thread has produdced a couple good approaches for
practical solutions for an old problem and they both go into my
keepers book.

w3rv