"Jim Lux" wrote in message
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That's likely because the effective height of the antenna is low. A low
antenna on 80m means cloud/worm warmer. (and low, in this context, means
20m, which is still way up in the sky).

So the traditional single support inverted V has all sorts of advantages:
only one support needed
puts the important part of the antenna (the middle) up high

For many it is difficult to get an antenna up more than 60 feet. That is
close to 1/4 wavelength or less. My back yard has trees on each side and
it was easy to string a dipole close to 60 feet on the ends,but no way to
support the antenna in the middle. That was why the question of should I
string the dipole as tight as possiable with out breaking or adjust the drop
in the middle to some optimum distance for what I want to do. I sort of
thought the mort horizontal it is the beter the signal would be at a
distance, but there may be an optimal angle to have a 200 to 300 mile
antenna.

On Fri, 9 Jul 2010 14:08:17 -0400, "Ralph Mowery"
wrote:

For many it is difficult to get an antenna up more than 60 feet. That is
close to 1/4 wavelength or less. My back yard has trees on each side and
it was easy to string a dipole close to 60 feet on the ends,but no way to
support the antenna in the middle. That was why the question of should I
string the dipole as tight as possiable with out breaking or adjust the drop
in the middle to some optimum distance for what I want to do. I sort of
thought the mort horizontal it is the beter the signal would be at a
distance, but there may be an optimal angle to have a 200 to 300 mile
antenna.

Hi Ralph,

John's suggestion of using EZNEC in its free version would easily
answer all the questions, test all the assertions, and find all the
unstated characteristics in one fell swoop. It would also let you
find the necessary attributes to obtain your goal.

EZNEC would do all this faster than the 12 blind men trying to
describe an elephant.

However, as for your several questions above. You are not going to
discover gold at the end of the rainbow by tightening the droop. In
fact, getting it to an optimal height (as has been hammered home
several times as a principle necessity) won't budge your distant
contact's S-Meter more than a couple dB (about the width of the
needle).

73's
Richard Clark, KB7QHC