I've been using an inverted vee for 80 meters, with mediocre results.
I'm willing to experiment with other designs and I like the simplicity
of verticals, but I've got to get something up before the weather turns,
so if you've used a vertical on 80 meters, please answer these questions
for me.

1. Performance?
2. Is noise worse/better/the same?
3. Is a quarter-wave radiator essential, or can it be shorter?
4. Loading/tuning?

73,

Bill W1AC


--
Bill Horne

(Remove QRM from my address for direct replies.)

"Bill Horne" wrote in message
...
I've been using an inverted vee for 80 meters, with mediocre results.
I'm willing to experiment with other designs and I like the simplicity
of verticals, but I've got to get something up before the weather turns,
so if you've used a vertical on 80 meters, please answer these questions
for me.

1. Performance?
2. Is noise worse/better/the same?
3. Is a quarter-wave radiator essential, or can it be shorter?
4. Loading/tuning?

73,

Bill W1AC

Inverted V is more like a vertical. If you have a metal mast, it might BE a
vertical. If you can raise the ends It might work better.

Shorter antenna means narrower bandwidth. You will probably need a tuner
even with a full size vertical on 80m.

I used an inverted L with loading on the 9' vertical section. It had a 25'
horizontal section and worked well for short to medium skip on 80 and 40m.

I now have an HF9v Butternut. Royal pain to tune. Works well for longer
skip, worthless for short skip. Has good bandwidth on all bands 6-40m but
needs a tuner for most of 80 as the 2:1 bandwidth is about 20 kHz. The
inverted L came down because it detuned the vertical too much on all bands.
I wish I had both.

On Mon, 29 Sep 2008 20:31:42 EDT, Bill Horne wrote:

I've been using an inverted vee for 80 meters, with mediocre results.
I'm willing to experiment with other designs and I like the simplicity
of verticals, but I've got to get something up before the weather turns,
so if you've used a vertical on 80 meters, please answer these questions
for me.

1. Performance?
2. Is noise worse/better/the same?
3. Is a quarter-wave radiator essential, or can it be shorter?
4. Loading/tuning?

73,

Bill W1AC

I have not used a vertical on 80 meters, so I cannot answer questions 3 and 4.
However, I do have some opinions:

Whether a vertical is better than an inverted-V depends upon what you want to
accomplish. If you want maximum DX, then the main radiation lobe of your
antenna should be at a low angle re. the ground. A vertical antenna has a low
angle. A horizontal antenna (an inverted-V is mainly horizontal) must be up
about one wavelength (80 meters, 271 feet) to get a low-angle radiation lobe.

But, if you want to contact stations in your state or region (in your case, New
England and neighboring states), you want the radiated energy to go nearly
vertical, so that it bounces off the ionosphere and returns nearby. A
horizontal antenna mounted low does this. I live in the desert southwest near
Las Vegas where we have no tall trees to tie antennas to. I have a half-wave
80-meter dipole mounted about 25 feet (0.09 wavelength at 80 meters) high. It
gives me nearly-vertical radiation. I have good coverage of Nevada, southern
California and Arizona. But no DX. However, I don't chase DX; I'm content to
chat locally.

Local interference from lightning, power lines and most other non-intentional
sources is vertically polarized, so a horizontal or inverted-V would pick up
less of this type of noise. Distant interference from any source would be
reflected by the ionosphere and be of random polarization.

73 de Dick, AC7EL

On Sep 29, 8:31 pm, Bill Horne wrote:
I've been using an inverted vee for 80 meters, with mediocre results.

What sort of inverted V and what sort of results? (Coax fed, how high
are the center and the ends, what's the angle of the V?)

1. Performance?
2. Is noise worse/better/the same?
3. Is a quarter-wave radiator essential, or can it be shorter?
4. Loading/tuning?

I don't have much experience with 80 meter verticals but I do know
these basics:

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.

2) Verticals tend to be noisier, particularly on the lower bands. This
is why you will see 160 and 80 meter DXers and contesters using
verticals for transmitting and Beverages or other low-noise antennas
for receiving.

3) A vertical will give you low-angle radiation, which is great for DX
when the band is open, and good for local (few dozen miles) anytime,
but for the typical ragchew 50 to 1000 miles or so it can be
disappointing.

4) A decent inverted V can do a good job as an all-around antenna.
I've used a homebrew 80/40 coax fed trap inverted V with 100 watts for
years, and had many excellent QSOs with it on 80. Center at about 40
feet, ends about 15 feet, transcontinental and transatlantic QSOs
common if I stay up late enough. Many, many contest QSOs too. Not a
worldbeater but not a problem either.

73 de Jim, N2EY

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?
--

73 de K2ASP - Phil Kane

From a Clearing in the Silicon Forest
Beaverton (Washington County) Oregon

e-mail: k2asp [at] arrl [dot] net

O.M.'s
when i started the radiohobbythe first trx was a WO II .set A kind of
superreg with amplifier double use of the tubes rx superreg and tx
superreg tube used as a vfo and the lf tube was the tx final
the antenna was simple a length of wire tuned by a bicyclelamp.tuning a knob
and the lamp glowed.the knob simply moved a piece of pulverized iron in a
coil
some years later i used a fishing rod i wound a length of wire around it one
end to ground and feeded by an alligatorclamb.I hope youm understand that at
the ground end there was a coil so the antenna was a kind of baseloaded
with the fishingrod antenna you got a cheap and simple experimental antenna
type
i used tapped coil +length of wire taped coil and a coil in the centre
and taped coil length of wire and an coil at the top with some radials
I discovered that a grounding sistem is important However 60 feet of tuned
wire is not easy and a cupperpipe stroked in the ground to the waterlevel
is
expensive
An antenne is simplifyed a inductance and a capacity coil and condensator
that will resonate on the working frequency for matching the trx you may
divide the coil or condensor
a cooking recept for an antenna can not be given because the circumstances
are not the same and unpredictable only a few directions
now to days fishing rods are made from grafite so conductive when obtainable
use glasfibre rods
you also find a lot of information at the foxhunting groups at larry's site
sm0 vpo his balcony antenna

a lot of succes when experimenting
73 de Ruud PA 0 RAB ( rare antenna builder)

"Bill Horne" schreef in bericht
...
I've been using an inverted vee for 80 meters, with mediocre results. I'm
willing to experiment with other designs and I like the simplicity of
verticals, but I've got to get something up before the weather turns, so
if you've used a vertical on 80 meters, please answer these questions for
me.

1. Performance?
2. Is noise worse/better/the same?
3. Is a quarter-wave radiator essential, or can it be shorter?
4. Loading/tuning?

73,

Bill W1AC


--
Bill Horne

(Remove QRM from my address for direct replies.)

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 -