[IRCA] Tunable Active Whips

[Les Rayburn <les@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Years ago, I built a remote tunable active whip designed by longwave 
experimenter Bill Bowers. As I recall, the original design was published 
in the "Lowdown", official publication of the Longwave Club of America. 
Bill's design was a wonder. You varied the voltage sent to the whip, 
which in turn, changed the frequency that the whip was peaked on for 
reception. It was a very high "Q" design with sharp tuning.

It worked from LF (down to about 100KHZ) all the way up into the high 
end of the broadcast band. It was an amazing performer, and really 
worked great. Unfortunately, mine was damaged in a small tornado and I 
could not repair it. By then, I had misplaced the article, but a few 
days, I happened across the "indoor" portion of the device, basically a 
nice multi-turn variable potentiometer and power supply.

That got me thinking about the design--and how well the antenna worked.

I wonder if other MW DX'ers have experimented with remote tuned active 
whips? Are there any commercial versions of similar products available? 
The only one I have experience with is the Ramsey "Signal Magnet" but 
it's not very high "Q"...tuning peaks are not sharp, and gain is low.


--
73,


Les Rayburn, N1LF
Maylene, AL
EM63

Member NRC, IRCA, & Medium Wave DX Circle
Former CPC Chairman for NRC/IRCA

SDR-IQ,Funcube Pro, Wellbrooke ALA-1530+ loop, LF Engineering Active Whips,
Quantum Phaser, Kiwa Loop, Palstar MW Pre-Selector

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