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October 6th 08, 04:47 PM
posted to rec.radio.amateur.moderated
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Do you use a vertical on 80?
Phil Kane wrote:
On Fri, 3 Oct 2008 17:24:31 EDT, wrote: 1) A full-size one is 60-65 feet tall, and needs a ground system to match. Shortening sacrifices bandwidth and radiation efficiency. Yes, a lot can be done with a small antenna but you're looking for something better than the inverted V. Just this very evening I tried using my Cushcraft R-8 vertical - which is not supposed to tune 80 meters - on 80, It performed much better than my horizontal "all band" dipole when it came to weak signals in "NVIS" territory. The KAT100 tuner said 1:1. Guess which one I'll be using from now on? Hi Phil, I wouldn't abandon the doipole just yet. At the urging of Roy Lewallen some years ago, I tried an experiment regarding the perennial "Which is better, a dipole or a vertical?" question. I have a general purpose dipole, and a Butternut HF6V vertical. The vertical is setting on radials - around 20 at last count. So it performs pretty well. I used an attenuating pad between the tuner and the antenna. The dipole comes in on ladder line, and the vertical on coax, so i switched the antennas at the tuner. Then I would switch attenuation in or out to match up the signals. What was "best" was the antenna with the highest received signal The results were very interesting. Some were like what we've been told to expect. The horizontal tended to perform better at relatively local distances for 80 meters and the vertical past 500 miles or so was usually better. At higher frequencies this was not as marked, since the "take-off-angle" was not as different between vertical and horizontal antennas. The Vertical was a little louder overall than the horizontal, also a bit noisier. I don't think that it actually heard better - in that regard. But notice I said words like "tended" and "usually". There were times that the horizontal antenna worked better on DX, and the vertical worked better on locals. Then just to confound the matter, which antenna worked best could change in the middle of a QSO. I found that I had to be quick on the switches to make my measurements. But the differences were significant enough that I immediately saw the value of having both antennas Sometimes several S-units on a given signal. Other things I found we S-Meters are not linear within themselves. Don't even think of transmitting with the attenuator in the antenna path. They don't handle much power at all. But I did find out which antenna is better. Yes. - 73 de Mike N3LI - |
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