Bill,

NVIS antennas are in fact desirable in some applications, where you wish to
communicate only with stations nearby, say out to about 250 miles. I can see
them useful in emergency communcations scenarious to get good HF coverage of a
local disaster area, or for use on a section traffic net, or other similar
"local" communications needs. In a "contest" situation like Field Day they'd be
tactically useful to have in your bag if your station was located in a high
population density area with a lot of nearby stations like the east coast
corridor, so that you'd somewhat avoid having a skip-zone, especially if the low
bands (40 and 80) "go long" at night.

73, de Hans, K0HB