Roy Lewallen wrote:
Jimmie D wrote:

I once saw a demonstration that "BIG UGLY" cb antennas, these are
approximately 1/8 wl and have a huge loading coil, have more gain than
a 1/4 wl radiator. This certaily appeared to be the case when both the
antenna being test and the field strength meter's antenna were both
the "big ugly" variety and relatively close together(50'). Could this
"gain" be a result of magnetic coupling between the coils or was some
other trickery being performed.

There's no doubt this was some sort of trickery. I'd bet any amount of
money that if properly measured, the loaded 1/8 wave antenna would be
shown to have less gain due to lower efficiency. Even moderately
accurate antenna gain measurements are much more difficult to make than
most people realize, and there are many ways to be fooled. I couldn't
begin to list the all ways you could set up a demonstration like that to
get whatever result you desired.

Roy Lewallen, W7EL

Roy
For the sake of my continuing education what would I need in terms of
minimum equipment to make a meaningful comparison between antennas?
Just to keep it simple I'm working on two meters and seventy five
centimeters so far in my EMCOM prep work.
--
Tom Horne, W3TDH