Thanks all who contributed.

I re-read N1GY's original and he mentioned in his article about the actual
placing of the whips.

I followed his directions and placed the 75m and 40m whips at right angles
to each other and the ather two pairs of whips in a like manner.

This then made the whole job a little easier, but the 20m whips are not as
sharp in tuning as the other pairs.

I took Dales advice and actually slid a 1" piece of aluminium tubing over
the whip and slid them over the whip and found that the VSWR was reduced at
a point midway over the loading coil in the whip.

So I have got it working, thanks to you antenna specialists. I appreciate
the time taken to reply to my problem.

Regards
John
VK2KCE

"Howard W3CQH" wrote in message
. ..

"HRBE" wrote in message
news
Hello all,
I have a real doosey.

I built an Octopus, along the lines of the one which was featured in the
Dec 2007 issue of QST. This article was written by Geoff Haines N1GY.

The Octopus is a 4 band rotatable dipole, using either Hamsticks or
Workman mobile whips

I fitted the following Workman whips: 75m, 40m, 20m & 15m.

I can tune all but the 20m whips, there is naturally an interaction
between each of the whips, but 20m simply cannot be tuned. its resonance
is around 13.6mhz, and no matter what I do with the whip length it cannot
be bought into resonance.

I stress that 75m, 40, and 15m are great.

I have tried the 20m whips on their own as a single antenna and they tune
well, but as soon as I offer the second whip to complete the dipole, the
resonance drops to 13.6mhz.

When I refit all the other elements, it makes not much difference to the
20m whips as far as their resonance is concerned, it does shift a bit
which is understandable.

I have tried rearranging the whips out of sequence around the hub, but
that made no difference.

Am I missing something, or are the Workman whips poorly designed?

Is there a preferred way of arranging the whips so that I do minimise
interaction between the elements?

Why are the 20m whips the only ones giving me trouble?

I am using an MFJ269 Pro to tune each band.

Thanks,
John
VK2KCE

You might want to attach about 100ft as a counterpoise, then it should
load up.
73's de Howard W3CQH/r