Stefan, do you have those religious fantasies often? You know we do
have drugs now, that cure those.... Drugs are preferred over the old
tried and true cure, which involved piles of dry wood, pubertal girls,
and combustion...
Anyway; Hey I enjoyed your discussion... Now back to the task at
hand...

Rick, to improve DX performance on a quarter wave vertical over a
reasonable radial field I have to go to a dipole at 100 feet, or to
one of the high inverted vees, 120 & 150 feet.. While I no longer have
a horizontal antenna below 100 feet for 80, when I did the quarter
wave vertical shone on DX compared to the lower horizontal antennas..
Secondly, 18 radials just will not do it when you care to send the
very best hallmark... An absolute minimum of 30 is needed, and for
long dx 50+ is going to be neeeded... By the time you have the radial
count up to the 50-60 range you have pretty well maxed out any major
improvements until you surpass a 100...

Now, there are those who like elevated radials Christman and those
who hate em Rauch.. I have to say that my personal experiences on
160 is that 10 or 12, 1/4 wave and tuned, elevated radials works - but
they are a pain to keep in the air (in the woods), and tuned, and
working... I worked Heard Island with the elevated array on 160...
My current 160 ground mounted vertical array has well over a hundred
radials of varying lengths and seems to work (G3 from the black RF
hole of Michigan on 100 watts while the amp was warming up two nights
ago, so it plays reasonably well)
Now a dipole or vee at 130 feet is simply not going to work on 160,
period... Oh yeah, you can wow the guys at 700 miles with your NVIS
signal, but you will get trampled in a dx pileup...

So bottom line, even on 80, is that you need to either go to an
elevated array as others suggested, or you need to improve your ground
radial count - at which point the vertical will shine over a low vee
at 1000 + miles...

Roy, similarily in my profession; I know that half of everything they
taught me is wrong, they just won't tell me which half!

cheers