Quote:
Originally Posted by Ralph Mowery
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I think it is more then obvious that you do not know what you are talking about when it comes to antenna's.
The key to any antenna is LOCATION / LOCATION / LOCATION....
If you are in a crappy location, it is not going to work well...
If you are in a good location, the B & W 90 will out talk your Carolina Windom or any other long wire antenna, due to the fact that antenna tuners reduce the amount of power applied and they do not physically tune the antenna, just the coax to the antenna. The only tuners that works is the ones that are placed directly at the feed point of the antenna, not something inside of the shack...
The B&W 90 on 20 meters acts kind of like a beam antenna, which exhibits some forward gain - due to the nature of it's construction.
The one wire acts like a reflector while the other wire acts like a driven element.
On 40 meters it still acts like a 1.5 wave antenna and on 80 meters it acts like a Dipole antenna...
On 160 meters - if you wanted to be all that you could be - it would need to be 80' or more } depending upon terrain } off the ground to get in the right place for it to be at optimum height...
It also depends upon the ground {earth } underneath the antenna...
Wet / swampy earth is always better then rocky dry soil....
You have to realize what arrival angle the DX signals come in at and the fact that there is two signals you are receiving, both the direct path { good} and the reflection off the earth { bad} at Gb before reaching our station location..
Unless you compared the two antenna's at the same location at the same time, at the same height within one hour of each other, there is no way for sure for you to comment about which antenna works best...
10 - 40 meters band equals about 19.9 meters of height mininum / needed to get optimal angle.
20 meters likes about 32 meters of height, heights between 15 and 32 meters - { 50 - 105 feet are about as good as you can get} for anything between 6 meters and 160 meters....
Most people just puts their wire antenna in a tree about 40' high or strings it up between two towers and calls it good enough.
The problem is - there is a null on the ends of the antenna and the path that the signal uses isn't always a straight line...
The problem is - with a 160 meter antenna, this is hard to accomplish, hence it is easier to use a vertical antenna for 80 and 160 meters - but is very expensive to use a base tuner and a 80 / 160 meter vertical antenna - which must be supported by some type of tower in most locations.
The wind would damage it quickly and its survival rate would be poor without some type of support...
At the same time, my antenna is mounted 20' off the ground between two houses, and a jib boom mounted on the back of my house, fed with 40' of cheap Radio Shack coax and it still talks well in most directions.
I can hear north / south / east / west with a antenna that is aimed east and west and sometimes when the Maritime Mobile net or the YL network needs a relay station, I can relay between two signals - where they are using some type of beam antenna for the monitoring station and the person trying to check in either has a beam with a poor signal or a G5RV...
And I never run more then 100 watts!
Even when they are running 1000 watts - my signal still is better then most peoples signals on 20 and 40 meters....
If I really need some help, I just turn on the processor and it has enough compression that I can get through, even when there is a pile up...