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tom · February 20th 13, 02:32 AM posted to rec.radio.amateur.antenna

On 2/13/2013 9:50 PM, tom wrote:
On 2/12/2013 10:15 PM, wrote:

Well maybe as far as the standard Ringo, which is a half wave.
But the Ringo Ranger was a dual 5/8 collinear. Seems to me that
design was used more to get more gain vs the shorter antennas,
rather than trying to avoid radials.

When it first came out, decoupling from the feed line was not
given too much consideration, at least for lower cost amateur
antennas.. And most that used it, thought it did OK. Likely
because they had nothing better to compare to, or the feed line
lengths, mounting, did not skew that pattern as bad in some
cases, as it did others. The amount of skewing will vary some
in each installation. It was pretty bad in my case.

But then the Isopole came out.. And the roof caved in. lol..
The Isopole was so much better performing than the regular
Ringo Ranger, that Cushcraft had no choice but to add some
method of decoupling to their antenna, if they wanted to
continue to sell many of them.
So they added the lower 50 inches of coax, and a set of
1/4 wave radials at the bottom of that length of coax, which
was grounded at that point, to the mast supporting the antenna.

The decoupling section helped greatly, and saved Cushcraft
from certain VHF vertical sales ruination.
It was still slightly inferior to the method the Isopole
used, but close enough to keep them in the game.
Many preferred the RR2 because it was a bit less ugly than
the Isopole. And maybe a bit cheaper, but I can't remember
how they were priced at the time.

I have a Cushcraft engineering connection from that era. I will seen
what I can learn.

tom
K0TAR

Spent a while on the phone with Joe. Most was about other things for an
hour and a half.

Story as I know it -

Dateline was mid 70's. A local ham (unknown) designed a CB antenna that
was the original Ranger. It was copied by Lester Cushman.

It was redone as antennas for 6 and 2. And it had decoupling issues.

And Dave Olean (still well known) was assigned to handle the decoupling
issues.

And that's what we know.

tom
K0TAR