[Elecraft] Elecraft contributor scaling Wyoming peaks with KX1

[Jim Brown]

On Mon, 26 Jul 2004 09:39:50 -0100, Julian, G4ILO wrote:

>As a matter of interest, what kind of propagation can you expect working HF 
>from a mountain top, compared to say a riverside or beach location?

Having just put a new mountaintop QTH on the air, I can offer my experience on 
the  basis of a dozen or so hours of operation. See W6BX at qrz.com.  So far, I 
have two antennas up, both sloping half-wave dipoles rigged from the top of the 
tower down toward the ground. My experience so far is that these antennas at this 
qth on 160, 80, and 40 are significantly more effective (I would guess at least 6 
dB, maybe more) than horizontal dipoles at my home qth in Chicago. 

After a lot of study of various antenna books (including ON4UN's book and a lot of 
stuff from ARRL), I purposely chose sloping dipoles because I didn't want to be 
dependent on what I expect to be poor soil conductivity at the top of this mountain.  
At a riverside or beach location I might have been more inclined to use a 
traditional vertical. 

One of the other obvious advantages of a remote site is the absence of local 
noise. 

Jim Brown  K9YC