Antenna ? Wire verticals

[K0YLW]

I will be putting up an inverted L for 160 meters . I want to build wire 40 and 80 meter verticals. How far apart should they be?
I will use raised radials on all of the above.
I read an artical about making antennas with three wires in a triangle shape.They did not say what the spacing of the vertical wire should be for each band . These antennas would be the precureser to four squares on 40 and 80 meters.
These antennas will all be supported by trees.
The tallest pine will get the 160 L. If the 135 foot wire is mostly vertical with only a small portion folded over be ok?
Thanks for all the help that I have gotten from everyone here.
k0ylw Jeff

[KE5FRF]

Your post is a little vague, but I surmise that you plan on feeding several vertical elements from a common feedpoint, "fan" style. This is exactly how my wire vertical is built. I have 3 elements spaced a couple of feet apart and it works well.

My elements are for 80, 40, and 30 meters. But I did something unique that really works pretty good!

The 80 meter element is very long. If I remember, I cut 67 feet of wire or so. I climbed the tree to secure it along the way, but I only got about 45 feet up the tree before my bowels started to move (putting it politely). I was not climbing any higher than that! This is my tallest tree, and I never had any luck with getting wire up it any higher than this with the slingshot or fishing rod method. So, I decided to coil the top 20 feet of wire and secure it and hope for the best.

I installed my 40 and 30 elements with the same method without any trouble. I put down some radials, and checked the antenna with my analyzer. I found that the 40/30 elements were a little long but had a resonant point with <2:1 SWR fairly close to where I wanted it. The 80 meter element was only CLOSE to resonant, I believe, if I remember, somewhere around 4.5 Mhz. I think the SWR was 3.5:1 or so and that was the best dip on the meter.

I didn't want to climb the tree again to that height, so I decided to order a 4:1 UNUN in hopes that I could at least get the wire to match 50 ohms.

What I did was install the UNUN with the 80 meter wire, and then, I drilled a hole in the side of the UNUN and IN PARRALEL to the "innards" of the UNUN from the center conductor at the base, I soldered another wire and added a connection point in the hole that I drilled. In other words, I bypassed the UNUN with a straight through wire connection so that I could feed my 40/30 elements straight from the coax center pin IN PARALLEL with the UNUN-80 combo.

Before doing this, with JUST the UNUN and 80 element, I had a match on several bands but not all of them. I could have been satisfied with just the one element and UNUN. However, when I added the 40/30 elements, I HAD A MATCH ON EVERY BAND 80-10 meters. My 30 meter SWR still needs tweaking (about 2.2:1 SWR) for me to be really happy with it, but I haven't got around to it yet.

80-FLAT/40-FLAT/30-2.2:1/20-1.5:1/17-FLAT/15 1.5:1/12-FLAT/10-FLAT

No SWR above 2.2:1

When I installed it in the spring, the low bands were still fairly quiet. The summer noise is too much now for the 80 meter element. I only hear the occasional signal in the noise and some strong local signals now and then. The UNUN definately helped me get the "shortened" 80 meter element to work. It is a compromise though. I think getting more radials down will also help. The UNUN also made it possible for the other bands to match and work reasonably well for multiband use. The 40 and 30 radiators are independent.

I haven't modelled this and have no idea what my radiation pattern might look like. A wire hanging from a tree won't have an ideal pattern anyway. Getting more radials down (I have just over 20 at the moment) will eventually help the antenna work more efficiently.

I hope some of this info might help.

[K4SAV]

The information given is very confusing, and to avoid giving random answers which are useless, it would be helpful if there was more information. There can be varying degrees of interaction depending on how you are going to build this. That is easily overcome with single verticals, but four squares are more complicated. With four squares, all the elements need to be as close to identical as possible, and the system needs to be symmetrical, to keep the feedpoint impedances close. That is difficult to do with elevated radials, especially when the vertical wire is held by a tree. If there are other wires very close, it gets even more complicated.

Elevated radials complicate the problem because you have to worry about them resonating in combination with unused vertical elements. Radial symmetry is important in 4 squares.

I will be putting up an inverted L for 160 meters . I want to build wire 40 and 80 meter verticals. How far apart should they be?
I will use raised radials on all of the above.

Are you planning on putting them close enough to use a common radial system, or separate them by a fairly wide distance with each vertical having its own radial system? Each can be made to work for single verticals, but common radials systems is not likely to work for four squares.

I read an artical about making antennas with three wires in a triangle shape.They did not say what the spacing of the vertical wire should be for each band .

I haven't a clue as to what you are thinking.

These antennas would be the precureser to four squares on 40 and 80 meters.

Does that mean you are planning four sites with each having multiple verticals for 40 and 80? (That will be a difficult design and probably won't work well.) Do you want to use whatever you have for the verticals as one element of the future four square? (Then you need to design the four square from the very beginning.) Where is the 160 vertical? Or will all these four square elements be in widely separate locations with separate radial systems. Are you thinking one four square inside the other (which is unlikely to work with elevated radials). How much area do you have available?

These antennas will all be supported by trees. The tallest pine will get the 160 L. If the 135 foot wire is mostly vertical with only a small portion folded over be ok?

That would make a very good 160 L. How much height do you have? If there is only a small horizontal wire, it will look mostly like a vertical and that should work very well on 160. You may want a matching network at the base because the feedpoint impedance is likely to be low. The number of elevated radials and their height will have some effect on antenna gain, feedpoint impedance, and what you need for a choke at the feedpoint.

Sorry for all the questions and few answers, but as you can see, I can't guess what you are thinking, and it is a complicated system. More specific data and questions should get some more useful answers.

Jerry, K4SAV