On Saturday, February 9, 2013 3:37:26 PM UTC-6, Jeff Liebermann wrote:

Dr Reynolds did write an article "The 5/8-Wavelength Antenna Mystique"

for the ARRL Antenna Compendium, Volume 1 Pg 101-106, (that seems to

have disappeared from my shelf), which may have created some

confusion.



My take on the Ringo Ranger is that it's a tolerable design, but not

the way it's being built.

I think they were OK for a simple and fairly cheap design, but
the Ringo Ranger 2 was a much better antenna than the regular
Ringo Ranger without the lower decoupling section.
I picked up a Ringo Ranger free years ago, and made my own radial
set which copied the commercial Ringo Ranger 2 design.

I tested it without the section, and with, and there was a huge
difference in the pattern. I'm talking in the multi S units range
with the local low angle signals I was testing with.
So there was obviously a large amount of skewing without the
decoupling section. With it, it was not a bad antenna at all,
and fairly low impact visually.

Reynolds was involved with AEA, and was behind the design of
the Isopoles, and other marine type whips they sold.
The Isopole was slightly superior to the Ringo Ranger 2, mainly
because it had superior decoupling with it's cones, vs the RR2
using a length of feedline, and a set of radials.
But to me, the Isopole was kind of ugly.. Like having a ballistic
missile on the house.. lol.. But it was the best of the dual
5/8 wave verticals when it came to performance.