StackMatch User N8BJQ

>Hi Jay
>
>Finally got to use the Stack Match that I bought at Dayton. I've stacked 3
>C3's on a 100' tower. The top one is at 112' and is a C3, the middle is a
>C3E at 74' and the lower is a C3E at 36'. The lower two are fixed on EU
for
>the winter. In the spring, if this stuff survives, I plan to rotate the
>middle C3E. Also on the tower is a 2 ele Cushcraft on 40 and 13 ele on 2
>mtrs and 5 ele on 6 mtrs.
>
>We had a minor glitch with the relay box. In my haste to get this stuff
up,
>I didn't check it before we put it on the tower, and it bit us in the ass.
>When we hooked up the top 2 antennas, we could not get anything to work on
>position 3. We suspected a bad piece of coax (since I made them) but
moving
>the coax to position 1 enabled the top antenna to work. After taking the
>box apart on the tower and verifying the wiring (which I also did), we
could
>not find anything wrong. N8NR (the guy on the tower), decided to take it
>down and test it in the shack with a short piece of rotor cable. Again,
>nothing on pos. 3. We took the circuit board out of the relay box and
ohmed
>the relays. Just as Bob was about to put the board back together, he
>spotted 2 connections on relay 3 that were thru the board but not soldered.
>A quick touch with the soldering iron fixed the problem and the rest of the
>installation went without a hitch. The only other gotcha was the knob came
>with no set screw. A trip to my local radio shack remedied that with a
>nicer knob.
>
>Preliminary testing shows about 1 S unit improvement with all 3 antennas
>selected and pointing at EU. Should be good for at least 10 more Q's per
>contest. Looking forward to SS CW to give them a try.
>
>Here's a pix for your file.

>I've had good luck with the C3's. SWR curves appear to be good on all
>bands, both individually and when fed together. I do have a bit of
>interaction with my 80 meter dipole and the middle beam - will have to
>relocate the dipole. I just put the C3's together according to the manual
>and stuck them up. I doubt that I've got much gain but do have some
>versatility now. On some sigs out of EU, I can see about 1 S unit increase
>when I feed all three, and there are some differences when you switch thru
>the different combinations. I'll know more after a contest or two. You
>probably can't get real gain out of small tribanders that far apart. When
I
>get some time I'll see if I can gin up some graphs.
>
>Steve
>
>
>Steve, N8BJQ  email Steve at: n8bjq@erinet.com
>