Gene wrote:

Getting ready to purchase a ICOM 8500, and as I live in a community
where a long wire would be out of the question, I have been told that
a discone will work quite well for my monitoring activities, and will
be rather hard for the grumpy neighbors to see, as compared to a beam,
etc. etc.... . Any comments on this? How high should I install it.
Probably cant go over 15 or 20 feet at the most. I intend to use some
type of telescoping mast, so when one of our Florida hurricanes comes,
I can "bring er down"! Since the antenna will be coupled to the mast,
will I still need to ground it? (I know thats probably a really stupid
question, but it seems as if the metal mast would take a lightning
strike (God forbid!) to the ground, rather than into the house..(??)
A neighbor of mine has a little discone up around 15 ft., and uses it
to transmit on the 6 meter (or is it 20 meter) bank. Works quite well,
he says. Thanks in advance for any info


You can use a discone for 30 Mhz and up for sure. the performance below
that falls off very quick. I use my discone with an ICOM R7000.

As for grounding yes you have to ground the anttena. It is for safety as
the lightening may want to flow down your coax lead in no matter what is
struck by the lightening. Lightening goes everywhere when it hits and
into the house via the coax is a good possibliity.

My discone sits on top of 2-10 foot mast sections. The coax is fed to a
gound rod via an anti satic device, then on to the radio. the mast is
bolted to my dack so is easy to take down

You could use the 20 mast as an antenna. run coax to the mast and secure
it to the bottom. You now have a 20 foot vertical antenna that will be
fine on SW.

There is more info about grounding and antennas at the AMANDX site below

--
73 and Best of DX
Shawn Axelrod
VE4DX1SMA

Visit the AMANDX DX site with info for the new or experienced listener:

http://www.angelfire.com/mb/amandx/index.html

REMEMBER ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN HEAR FOREVER