Hi Kevin,

I have two questions.  First, do you feed the antenna with coax or ladder
line?  Second, do the traps cause the antenna to resonate in a very narrow
portion of the band?

Steve

On Saturday 2/15/03 13:02 Kevin Nathan wrote:
>Hi All,
>
>I just want to give a short review of my new antenna.  It is the Alpha Delta
>DX-A also known as the twin sloper.  This antenna consists of two wire
>elements attached to a center mounting plate.  One of these is approximately
>67 feet long which works on 80 meters and the other is 55 feet long with a
>coil/trap arrangement in it called an iso-res inductor.  This element works
>on 40 and 160 meters.  The antenna attaches to one leg of a tower or can
>also be mounted to a nonconductive support.  It uses the tower as the ground
>return so if you use a nonconductive mount, it recommends the use of a down
>lead to a ground rod at the base of the support.  The antenna looks just
>like an inverted vee when you set it up.
>
>Here it is mounted on a 50 foot Rohn 25G tower at about the 42 foot level.
>I have a Cushcraft A3 on the top of the tower along with a 3 element 6 meter
>beam and a vhf/uhf collinear.  The directions and literature for the antenna
>say it works best with such top loading.  Alpha Delta may be able to give
>ideas for top loading when a beam isn't present.
>
>Now, for performance.  Despite all the bad mouthing this antenna has taken
>over the years from antenna gurus, it is working like a bomb for me.  So far
>with only one real week of work I have worked V31FG on 160 the other evening
>as well as a couple of long path QSO's to Europe which I mentioned on here
>before.  Last night I got on in the contest on 40 meters and worked P40,
>KP4, PJ2, FM5 and others all with 100 watts from the Seattle area.  Then, I
>went down on 80 and worked TG0, P40 and one other Caribbean station I can't
>remember without looking in the log.  Admittedly, I did run about 600 watts.
>Then, this morning on 80 I worked several JA's, RU0 and BV.
>
>While it's not a power house antenna, it is certainly a better dx antenna
>than I've ever used on those bands.  It also works very well on 30 and 17
>with the tuner in my rig.  It does well with local contacts as well.
>
>All in all, for $60 U.S. this is a winner and a keeper.  I just wanted to
>give people out there an idea for another antenna if they are looking and I
>appreciate you reading this.
>
>Thanks much and very 73.
>Kevin, K7RX :)