On 40 meters, I have a vertical with two sloping radials with the top of the
vertical at 60 feet. I also have a full wave center-fed horizontal antenna
that I use on 40, and that antenna is at 65 feet.

90% of the time, DX stations are stronger and/or more readable on the
vertical than on the horizontal antenna. Likewise, 90% of the time USA
stations east of the Mississippi (I'm in NC) are much stronger on the
horizontal than on the vertical. However, there are those occasional days
when many stations in the eastern USA are stronger on the vertical than the
horizontal.

If I'm working a USA contest or just want to participate in ECARs, MidCARS,
or SouthCARS, I'll go with the horizontal. DX chasing is always done on the
vertical. I can switch between the two for those rare exceptions.

I'm in a pretty quiet area from a noise standpoint, and find no advantage to
either antenna when it comes to noise.

If you have no interest in DXing, I'd say just stick with the horizontal
antenna. If the prime interest is DXing, then the vertical might be the way
to go for you. An interesting variation that provides decent vertical and
horizontal polarization is the center fed "L", where one half is horizontal
and one is vertical, fed at the center with open wire line. That works
remarkably well for me on 80/75 meters.

73, K8AC



"ml" wrote in message
...


i was wondering.. ... currently i have a horz center fed dipole it's
not big but my roofside sgc at least keeps the swr's nice.

it's about 20ft off the surface of my roof wich is about 175ft off the
ground ...


i was thinking about adding a verticle antenna such as the
challanger(gap) or such...



what i ponder is what if any improvements i might see over the dipole
or if under what 'conditions' it might be better --if at all??


tnx