Jack Twilley wrote:
"This is the kind of experience I had hoped to hear."

A look at the vertical radiation patterns of half-wave horizontals
broadside to the antenna wire such as that shown on page 3-11 of the
19th edition of the ARRL Antenna Book provides evidence of the best
height.

A vertical angle of 50-degrees gives a first reflection target distance
of 80 to 500 miles, depending on the height of the reflecting layer,
from the graph on page 92 of Ed Laport`s "Antenna Engineering". A
vertical angle of 5-degrees gives a target distance of 700 to 2500 miles
according to the same graph.

For angles between 5 and 50-degrees, a dipole height of 1/2-wave
maximizes radiation around a vertical angle of about 30-degrees.

Best regards, Richard Harrison, KB5WZI