"Phil Kane" wrote in message
.net...
| On Fri, 11 Jul 2003 14:19:29 GMT, Dick Carroll wrote:
|
| There's no AM tower in Santa Clara (or at least none in the
last 40
| years that I know of), let alone one that meets that
description.
|
| OOP! that Should have been Santa Cruz. Ya know, the place with the
| big boardwalk and all the thong bikinis.......
|
| This one is right above the water level on a slough of some sort, I
| didn't get that good a look but observed it as we drove past. Sure
| looked like an local AM tower of the sort I've worked around.
|
| Ah yes - KSCO, whose long-time owner/engineer, the late Vern
Berlin.
| was colloquially known as "The Radio Sheriff of Santa Cruz".
Anyone
| do anything that wasn't kosher - bang, here comes the phone call
| from Vern. IIRC he was an olde-tymer ham as well.
|
| He's been gone for many years now.
|
| But yes, the multi-tower array is in a salt marsh (protected
| wetland) and the radials dribble off into the water. The use of a
| 120-radial counterpoise ground of proper length gives some
stability
| to the antenna impedance and to the vertical pattern which is
| important in MF work because of night-time sky-wave factors.
|
| --
| 73 de K2ASP - Phil Kane
|
| I sure agree with that comment, Phil. What's really interesting is
a 4-tower inline array with one of the towers winding up as a negative
impedance. Lots of fun to keep that monster in tune. Glad I don't
have to do that any more. Same 4 towers are top loaded with the upper
most set of guy insulators on each tower shorted out, then no
additional insulators put lower down on the guys. Talk about a
drifting array when rime ice forms on the wires during the winter.

I also measured the peak RF voltage at the base of the two center
towers at over 15,000 volts each! This with only 5 KW of RF total
input.

73, Sam