Antenna installation

klem kedidelhopper · 2012-07-14T13:34:39+00:00

I have an odd sort of an antenna installation I have to deal with. Atour camp we have an old Winegard compact amplified UHF VHF/FM antenna,and an Alliance rotor. This particular Winegard antenna if I'm notmistaken was available with and without and/or a small built in rotor.Mine came off a retrofit job many years ago and is amplified andeither we never connected the internal motor or it didn't have one. Ijust don't recall. I cannot find any information on this antennaanywhere. This antenna was admittedly a compromise between signal anddirectionality and popular around 1985 or so and was designed forurban locations close to the transmitters.Our camp is deep fringe and I would have installed something like an8200, however I settled for this antenna at the request of the rest ofthe family who did not want to see something as large as an 8200 upthere. The small antenna worked OK for several VHF stations which camein snowy but were watchable, but it did not receive any UHF. None ofus among the three families who use the camp during different parts ofthe Summer ever really minded much about this. Our family only spendstwo weeks out there. The antenna was small and unobtrusive and as abonus we also used it for FM, which worked satisfactorily.For those familiar with Winegard antennas, (and hopefully someone whocan help me identify this one) the body of this unit is a blackplastic case which looks like an old GA 8780 mast mountedpreamplifier, except it's just a slight bit larger. The case mountedon top of the mast. Coming out of the black plastic case in sort of asemi circle arrangement I believe,( I can't see the antenna right now as the camp is remote, and mymemory isn't that good), are either four or six round radials about .25inch diameter and 24 inches long.Now since the digital transition we can get just two stations andunreliably at that, and so I've finally convinced the other twofamilies that we need to upgrade to a bigger antenna. So what I planto do is remove the...

Jul 14, 2012 21 Replies

Rate this thread:

isw 14 years ago

The impedance may not change, but I'm pretty sure the insulation in Romex is vinyl, and I'm pretty sure it has a serious loss factor above HF. There's a good reason you see polystyrene, mylar, mica, glass, and teflon capacitors, but not vinyl capacitors.

Isaac

Vote

Jeff Liebermann 14 years ago

Romex is vinyl jacketed PVC. Not the best of insulation for RF. I couldn't find a value for loss tangent, probably because it varies by composition, manufacturer, color doping, position of the moon, etc.

You're probably right that it's not useful at UHF, but I'm too lazy/busy to test it.

The ham doing the Romex testing was Dave Stoddart W8FLL (SK) who died in 2008.

Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

Vote

Join the Discussion

Have something to add? Share your thoughts — no account required.

Didn't find your answer?

Ask the community — no account required