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FM antenna array picture.

What area are you serving? I would happily plot pop counts if the calls are provided by PM. An 8 bay is an excellent way to manipulate the omni circle to an egg depending on mounting.

The power divider is unfortunately an OMB looking thing. Some have had issues. One part quits and then you have issues. Some use two 4 way dividers into a two way. Still a mess of things to go wrong. I can't imagine all the cables are equal length given the usual cables OMB supplies. Is the VSWR good? I have used an MFJ antenna analyzer on individual bays to verify the performance at frequency on the tower. Tie the cables down and oh yeah butyl or weatherproof the cables.

Go to the ERI site and look at what their antennas do based on bays and mounting. This won't be exact. If you are looking at something specific (an outlying town) this would be helpful. Bays are seemingly too close to the tower. This could be purpose for pattern distortion. Jack Mullaney said, Is it good engineering practice? Is it bad engineering practice? Pattern distortion is in the eye of the beholder.
 
TomZ said:
We got these pictures during last week's climb and now we're trying to find our best course of repair/replacement. This array was built by a Dallas Texas man who's last name is Shoemaker. I don't know any more about him|?|

Anyway, one picture shows a bay that's been bent and I drew some lines showing where the bend should be.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/15067584/113_0179r.jpg

We think it's repairable and/or another could be built but we will need to stay on the air.

So now we're confused about how to keep the candle lit without causing more damage.

The picture of the power divider leads me to think it's a simple 8-way connector.... ???

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/15067584/113_0174r.jpg

How would you proceed?
Click to expand...

Is the antenna type accepted? I ran into a homebrew FM in my area and ended up replacing it when it was discovered that the "builder" faked the type acceptance on the license app.

RFB
 
You could probably put up something like an SWR FM/2 (around a grand for unity gain) as a back-up --and end up with more signal than is getting out of that mess. I am assuming this station is not running much power through this thing.

What kind of ERP are we talking about? What power transmitter? Given the prices of solid state transmitters on the market now the best long term solution may be fewer bays bigger transmitter.
 
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