[Antennas] Inverted "L"

[Billy Cox]

>I have just put up an inverted "L" with a 26' vertical section and a 70' 
>horizontal section.  It really works well, much better than my 40 meter 
>dipole it replaced.  

Many years ago (early/mid 70's?) CQ had an article with a similar
layout ... I used a 33' up and then 66' out for several years on 40m
before relocating and putting up other antennas. The flat top (66')
acted more like a low dipole <as in 33' up> which was good for
high angle stuff ... and the vertical section (33') gave me very good
performance as to the lower angle stuff ... I used about 30 radials
as well as the water pipe ground of the house. Fed it directly with
50 ohm coax ... no matching network required. 

>BUT it seems to be very directional off the sides 
>of the horizontal section 

See above ... that's to be expected really ... for the
higher angle situations ... for the lower angles you
probably won't see much difference at all.

>so I am considering adding a second inverted  "L" oriented at 
>90 degrees to this one and a switch to switch a relay at the base 
>of the antennas to switch between the two.  Since the vertical section 
>of both antennas will be only about 8" apart, will I have any problems 
>with the "dead" antenna affecting the pattern of the "live" one?

I'd be more concerned as to how the two 66' horizontal sections
might interact ... than the vertical sections ... be interesting to 
model this too, just to see ...

Here's another idea ... look at the areas/directions that you really want 
to cover ... and simply re-orient the 70' section so that the high angle
radiation occurs into those areas ... the vertical section will still
give you good omni coverage for the other directions.

<and don't overlook the role of a good ground system there ...>

73 Billy AA4NU