Anyone out there ever try to make a tribander such as a cushcraft a-3 work on 17 15 and 12 instead of 20 15 and 10? I do not see why it couldn't be done. Any thoughs???? Anyone???
Seems you could shorten the tips, and lenghten the inners.. you may have to shorten the 15m section between the traps since the 10m sections are now 12m...
de N5NPO Norman Knapp
Modify tri-bander for 17m-15m-12m instead of 20m-15m-10-m
Can it be done? Of course. Is it a matter of adjusting dimensions? No. You will have to retune the coils since the overall capacitance of the antenna will change significantly. In addition, I would anticipate a great deal of interaction with 3 bands that close (only 6MHz of spectrum for 3 resonance points). You would probably be better served to use the aluminum and make a LP arrangement with dual phase shift fed driven elements to create a wide banded version with no traps at all. I would be interested to hear how it turns out if you try it with the trapped version. I think you will find a lot of barriers.