Richard Fry wrote:
"Cecil Moore" wrote
The average gain of a 1/4WL vertical monopole
with ground-mounted radials is in the ballpark
of 0 dB in all directions.

It is extremely difficult, if not impossible,
for a vertical monopole to achieve 6 dB gain
in any direction.

Zero or six decibels with respect to what reference, Cecil?

Sorry, I had a senior moment - should have been dBi.

If that reference is an isotropic radiator, then note that a typical
1/4-wave monopole and buried radial ground system used by commercial,
non-directional AM broadcast stations has an h-plane gain of about 5
dBi. This value has been confirmed by thousands of groundwave field
strength measurements of such systems going back 70+ years. Also note
that the gain of this monopole over a perfect, infinite ground plane
would be only 5.15 dBi, so a broadcast radiator is quite good indeed.

I was speaking of the typical ham radio 1/4WL monopole.
EZNEC's VERT1.EZ is an example of such an antenna with
a maximum gain of about 0 dBi.

The point was that the average 1/4WL amateur monopole
doesn't equal the maximum gain of an average 1/2WL dipole,
much less the gain of a more directional antenna.
--
73, Cecil http://www.w5dxp.com