Yes, you all pretty much confirmed my suspicions. I may try to set up
a dipole low to the ground NVIS style, but I know it's probably a
waste of time. I have a great time experimenting with shortwave
antennas (although my neighbors are going crazy wondering what I'm
doing) and haven't had much luck on 10 meters there, either.

My friend's setup is doing incredible things with 20 meters, but
they're all 1200+ miles away too.

I have a beautiful old Kenwood HF rig that I'm preparing to set up
now. Guess I had better start thinking about lower frequency
antennas.

Thanks for the advice, it is much appreciated!

On Sep 15, 12:38 pm, Cecil Moore wrote:
Dave Oldridge wrote:
You will not get a consistent path on 10m of 300 miles without some
pretty expensive antenna hardware and high power. Just cannot be done.

How about moon bounce? :-)

You'd actually get off cheaper trying to do it on 2m SSB (which would
probably work OK if you stacked two yagis one over the other and fed them
with a good amp).

Which reminds me of something that nobody seems to
have mentioned. If a QSO is the only goal, satellite
communications should work well if not too crowded.
--
73, Cecil http://www.w5dxp.com

On Sep 15, 12:05 pm, Denno wrote:
Yes, you all pretty much confirmed my suspicions. I may try to set up
a dipole low to the ground NVIS style, but I know it's probably a
waste of time.

I think you would be better off with a good vertical or ground plane.
There is not much point in running the typical "NVIS" antenna on
10m. There will be very few cases where the signal actually goes
straight up and down. Just doesn't happen on 10 much.
A low dipole will be the pits for most of the usual paths you
would work on 10m. It will be semi ok working skywave across
the country, but the good ground plane would likely be even
better. Probably by several db...
The ground/space wave with the low dipole will be half useless,
and much of the activity you will find on 10 will be fairly local at
times. In this case, the GP will smoke the dipole.
I used to hang out on 10 a lot several years ago, and if I had to
choose a single simple antenna, I'd use a good vertical or ground
plane as high as I could get it.
This will give the best overall performance for all the types of
paths you will likely work on 10m.
If you did get some short skip going, which is more likely
to be back scatter, or aurora, etc, the vertical will still do
the job as most will still be at a fairly low overall angles, unlike
the typical NVIS on 80m, etc.. There is very little true NVIS
on 10m. The skip zone is too long, even when it's short for
10..
MK