Barrett wrote:
Does it have to be a T shape and why?...

It "has to be" a piece of metal in the air.
That's about the only constraint. And seeing as
there are underground antennas, that constraint
is not always constant.

Put metal in the air. Tune it up. Work the world.

I'm on 20 and 40 meters on 5 watts on a
~75' dipole through a tuner every day. I make
contacts with Austraila, S America, Euro, Hawaii,
all from my little remote QRP SSB station in Arizona.
My dipole isn't tuned. It's simply two halves of a 150'
piece of wire I had.

I've done the same thing on a 35' wire, a ham stick
vert and a pair of hamsticks horizontal. I've loaded
up an aluminum lawn chair and worked Canada and the
USA midwest, Florida, New England. The difference
in any of the signals received is perhaps a couple
of dB.


Craig 'Lumpy' Lemke

www.n0eq.com