Phil Kane wrote:
On Fri, 3 Oct 2008 17:24:31 EDT, wrote:
1) A full-size one is 60-65 feet tall, and needs a ground system to
match. Shortening sacrifices bandwidth and radiation efficiency. Yes,
a lot can be done with a small antenna but you're looking for
something better than the inverted V.
Just this very evening I tried using my Cushcraft R-8 vertical - which
is not supposed to tune 80 meters - on 80, It performed much better
than my horizontal "all band" dipole when it came to weak signals in
"NVIS" territory. The KAT100 tuner said 1:1.
Guess which one I'll be using from now on?
Hi Phil,
I wouldn't abandon the doipole just yet.
At the urging of Roy Lewallen some years ago, I tried an experiment
regarding the perennial "Which is better, a dipole or a vertical?" question.
I have a general purpose dipole, and a Butternut HF6V vertical. The
vertical is setting on radials - around 20 at last count. So it performs
pretty well.
I used an attenuating pad between the tuner and the antenna. The dipole
comes in on ladder line, and the vertical on coax, so i switched the
antennas at the tuner. Then I would switch attenuation in or out to
match up the signals. What was "best" was the antenna with the highest
received signal
The results were very interesting.
Some were like what we've been told to expect. The horizontal tended to
perform better at relatively local distances for 80 meters and the
vertical past 500 miles or so was usually better.
At higher frequencies this was not as marked, since the "take-off-angle"
was not as different between vertical and horizontal antennas.
The Vertical was a little louder overall than the horizontal, also a bit
noisier. I don't think that it actually heard better - in that regard.
But notice I said words like "tended" and "usually".
There were times that the horizontal antenna worked better on DX, and
the vertical worked better on locals.
Then just to confound the matter, which antenna worked best could change
in the middle of a QSO. I found that I had to be quick on the switches
to make my measurements.
But the differences were significant enough that I immediately saw the
value of having both antennas Sometimes several S-units on a given signal.
Other things I found we
S-Meters are not linear within themselves.
Don't even think of transmitting with the attenuator in the antenna
path. They don't handle much power at all.
But I did find out which antenna is better.
Yes.
- 73 de Mike N3LI -