[IRCA] Vactrol for Flag?

[Les Rayburn <les@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I’m running a flag antenna mounted on a privacy fence in my back yard. I live in one of those dreaded HOA neighborhoods…so I have to hide the wire. Despite that, I get good performance using a fixed resistor. But I’m always searching for deeper nulls. 

Has anyone used a vactrol on a flag antenna? My ethernet run would be about 125 feet back to the shack. Worth the effort? 


73,

Les Rayburn, N1LF
121 Mayfair Park
Maylene, AL 
EM63nf

Member WTFDA, IRCA, NRC. Former CPC Chairman for NRC & IRCA. 

Elad FDM-S2 SDR, AirSpy SDR, Quantum Phaser, Wellbrook ALA1530 Loop, Wellbrook Flag, Clifton Labs Active Whip. 


> On Feb 23, 2016, at 8:42 AM, Bill Whitacre <bw@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> 
> On Feb 19, 2016, at 3:15 PM, Neil Kazaross wrote:
> 
>> Bill wrote, "If you’re living along a coast and point mostly in one
>> direction for your DX, the DKAZ with Vactrol remote termination control is
>> ‘THE way to go!’"
>> 
>> I inquire, so Bill, you're convinced that you're getting better across the
>> band F/B with a vactrol than with a fixed Rt? Or are you just using the
>> vactrol to squeeze out a few dB more F/B in a part of the band?
>> 
>> Hmm.. me things that I need to test this.
> 
> ---
> 
> The Vactrol is VERY handy on a DXpedition where I don't have time/energy to make multiple trips out to the antenna before dark to 'home in' on the proper single value of Rt.  The trade-off is a long run of CAT5 but that's fairly simple.  Once I find the best spot on the pot I don't play with it much so a fixed Rt after that would be just as good ... except that if I got inquisitive I could check things out with the Vactrol.
> 
> The first night I just shoved a 1K resistor at the back-end of the DKAZ and it showed the next day when I replaced it with the Vactrol and got up to 30dB nulls on Portland 750 and 25dB or more on Seattle 1000 & 950.  Given that I was facing around 280-290 deg. neither Portland nor Seattle were right 'off the back' so those aren't bad nulls -- depth or width!
> 
> What I want are my 'two days' back that I missed when the Monday flight I was on was diverted to Dulles after 'smoke in the cockpit.'  Left on Wednesday instead after a major 'hit' from the sun made things auroral for the first two days or more of the visit.  In a quick review of wav files that doesn't seem to have translated into much more than a couple of Philippine stations and more than the usual number of Aussies.
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