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Firestik Fire-Up 99 Has anyone tried one.?

hotrod said:
the solarcon gpk radials are too short to do much. when you get it replace those radials
with either a 102 s.s whips or 102 fiberglass whips . also the maco boomer gpk looks
interesting as well
Click to expand...

According to research,the talking heads say that it isn't necessary,that radials shorter can be used. Do you have some evidence that 1/4 wave whips will work because I have four SS R/S whips.

I have thought about mounting the GPK-1 upside down.
 
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w9cll said:
If the antenna is off the ground then the radials should be a bit longer the 1/4 the operating frequency.
Click to expand...

Oh,I can make them longer. I'd still like to mount the GPK-1 upside down. I read a post on this forum from a member said he knew someone who did and it was a talker.

P.S. The A99's base will be at 36-37' high. Since the A99's base diameter is 1 1/4", I thought about taking the end cap off of my 1 1/2" waterpipe mast,slit the mast end,slide the A99 down inside with the GPK-1 resting on the mast and use a muffler clamp to snug things up. That will electrically isolate the coax shield from RF for 17' until it exits the mast. That configuration uses the GPK-1 and the 17' mast pipe as the other half of the antenna. The mast pipe is grounded to a aluminum 10 ga. Solid wire and attached to a 8' copper coated ground rod driven into the ground. The land I live on has a 40' layer of moist sand with a thin layer if white bull tallow and then sand. Charlotte,N.C. Gets almost all of it's sand for concrete 4 miles away. Those big industrial size dump trucks(12' tall tires)look like hot wheels toys down in that sand pit.




http://www.worldwidedx.com/home-brew/152779-home-brew-tower-pics-4.html
 
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well i hope your hopes arent way up in the air on this one.

the antron 99 is a half wave end fed antenna, and because of that, it will not perform much differently with the ground plane kit on.
regardless of whether they are 6 or 9 feet long.

really, the only thing the ground plane kit does is remove some of the RF from the coax/ mast assembly.
there will still be some common mode currents moving down the coax with the ground plane kit so you will still need an RF choke at the feedpoint.

in reality it is not a "groundplane", it is a counterpoise.

the firestik part will not increase the performance at all, and will most likely hinder it.
it will not turn it into a top loaded antenna because the tuning coils are still present in the base of the antenna.
all you are doing is adding extra inductance to the antenna that you will have to tune out at the base.
pure snake oil my friend.
the entire idea behind the firestik line is hocum in my book.
they are partly responsible for the big "must have 18 feet of coax on my mobile antenna" hype that has been going on for decades.
its because their antennas dont work right unless they have the "stock" coax length.
why? because the coax is part of the radiating system!
that goes against the entire idea of using coax in the first place!

bottom line, the counterpoise may help keep some TVI out of your house, but doesnt do much else.
the firestik thing is a bad move. goes against sound antenna theory.

LC
 
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Minimal gains but would be good to help in every area for CB legal power radios. I'd still want to mount the GPK-1 upside down to see how that works. Kinda Vector 4000ish. Plus I'd have the only one in a two state region unless there are more like me. :love:


P.S. Those wonderful snake oil products are already screaming their way to my home. Might as well hang them on my A99.
 
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Lil'Jeshua, you have a lot of ideas to test and IMO you aren't likely to be successful if you try testing too many things at once. What I would do is test one idea at a time so you can see what does what, if anything. Then spend some time monitoring and recording each idea using signal reports with some of your local contacts. IMO a one contact report is not very conclusive.

I've personally tried turning my GP upside down on my A99, and it took me about 30 minutes to figure out...that idea was no-way-no, and I think my models posted below might reveal that.

I've tried many ideas that I've read and heard were super successful in getting the A99 to show improvement by as much as 2 Sunits in some reports, but to be honest I've never seen anything that I've ever tried that made a difference I could tell just using my radio.

I've added my GPK with 72" and 102" radials before, I've made bandwidth curve reports using a feed line with and without the GPK included, but the only thing I ever noticed was the GPK tended to make the BW curve show a slight bit more curve...it was more bowl shaped rather than flat...compared to the A99 without a GPK. Otherwise I could tell no difference in performance.

However there is something else to consider. My station is on very flat land for many square miles around me out to 70-100 miles in most directions, so your results may vary if you live in hilly country. Even so...I still can't see much change in using any of the ideas that you have presented here.

You might do a search here on WWDX for Spider Plane and check out a thread where Bob85 talks about a special radial design he did using a Silver Rod EFHW that showed remarkable results. I modeled it, and if I can find it I'll post what Eznec predicted for that idea.

Based on the models I post below, it looks like your best results will come by using slanted down radials.

I'm just curious, does your GPK hub provide for both horizontal and slanted down radials to be installed?

I also added a recap from my notes of the results from these models at 32' feet high, with 72" and 102" radials setup horizontal, slanted up, and slanted down.

View attachment A99 with various radial setups 1.pdf
 
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I just received my GPK-1 kit this morning. Still waiting for my Firestik to show up today also. Looking at the GPK-1 hub,I see that the angle would be too wide to mount the hub/radials upside down. Plus I don't think it would perform anywhere near what a Sirio Vector 4000 would do. I do have four R/S SS 101.5" whips that I could try on the GPK-1.

I was thinking about mounting the GPK-1 with the radials in the normal position with the radials point down. Take the galvanized cap off the top of my tower's 1 1/2" galvanized water pipe mast pole,use a hacksaw and slit the last two inches of the mast pipe. I'll attach the coax to the bottom A99's base and slip the A99 inside the mast pipe,letting the the GPK-1 hub provide a stop against the mast pipe. Take a muffler clamp and secure the A99 into the mast pipe. The GPK-1 and the 17' mast pipe will be the A99's other half of the antenna.

The A99's base section is 1 1/4" in dia. so the A99 should slide into the mast pipe fairly easily.

I could test it with the regular antenna top section and them with the Firestik FS99 Fire Up section. The Firestick offers more fine tuning with the adjustable thumbscrew threaded screw in it's tip.



I could wrap some electrical tape around the A99's base and GPK-1's hub to electrically isolate it from the tower.



I'll zero beat my MFJ-207 for the frequency I want to tune the antenna to and hook it up using a short jumper to the A99 to adjust the tuning rings and then the Firestik tip for the lowest swr.
 

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I don't have anything offhand to check the radial mounting angle degree wise.
The hub set screw needs an additional lock nut on it so that once I've tightened it against the A99's base it won't back out due to thermal contraction and expansion. Some NO-OX-ID on everything will make things easier to break it down later.
 

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Just received my NOS/NIB Firestick FS99. The wire is coiled a lot near the tuning tip but spirals at a less degree forwards the base.
 

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Marconi,the one with the 108" downward pointing radials looks like it has the best pattern gain towards the horizon. I'll study it some more. What would be the right pattern you would choose?
Thank you for sharing.
 

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