A horizontal Loop at low elevation can be an effective low angle radiator
when it is more than 2 wavelengths around.

I had a loop running around trees in my yard, irregular shape and random
length (210 feet), fed it with 300 ohm tv line. It worked quite well. At
its highest point it was under 30 feet and it was at 20 feet on two corners.
I even loaded it up on 160 and worked both coasts from here in Chicago with
100 watts.

Read up on the topic at
http://www.cebik.com/atl1.html

He has lots of other interesting antenna articles on that site, just stop
the address at the com/ to see the list.

KA9CAR
John


"Mark Sheffield" wrote in message
...
With the downturn in the solar cycle and worse days ahead, I'm faced
with operating on the lower hf bands. 20M has gotten to be very hit
or miss wrt propagation and it seems that more and more dx is
happening on 40 (with some on 30). I have a 40M dipole up about 30 ft
or so, but that really doesn't cut it.

I know that this is like a discussion about "what's the best color",
but what antenna systems will work well on 40M, maybe even 80M, that I
could mount either on the ground or up no higher than 30 ft? I need
to at least get some general direction on this from an experiential
data set rather than starting with the ads in QST or CQ.

Tnx - Mark Sheffield/N0LF