[Elecraft] Antenna?

[Mike Morrow]

Brian Mury wrote:

>I would also like to see a comparison between the horizontal and
>vertical antennas. I don't think the horizontal antenna would
>necessarily beat the vertical - it depends on a few variables, a couple
>big ones that come to mind being the height of the dipole and the
>vertical's counterpoise. 

Hi Brian,

HF verticals perform poorly without, as you mention above, a very good counterpoise or ground plane.  In temporary portable installations, that is generally very difficult to obtain.  But for a dipole, it's a non-issue altogether.

I've never been able to get any vertical antenna (even a very expensive Australian-made dummy load) to perform within several s-units of a half-wave dipole that was up only about ten feet in side-by-side tests at a *temporary* site.

The generalizations I make are simply based on what I've observed in several decades of tinkering with campsite antennas.  They apply only to practical portable installations, not to the more optimally configured fixed vertical situation where observed performance may more likely reflect the theory.

73,
Mike / KK5F