[Elecraft] RE: Low Antenna on Mountain Top

[Bill Tippett]

WA3WSJ:
 >Recently I compared a 40m dipole fed with 300 ohm ladder line
up 20 feet to a ground-mounted vertical on a 100 foot cliff at Turkey
Point Lighthouse, MD. The vertical beat the dipole by around two
S-Units.

         Interesting.  I had just the opposite
experience in the recent Flight of the Bumblebees
test.  I was using an 88' doublet with 40' apex and 25'
ends fed with 300 ohm line to an Emtech ZM-2 versus
a Par End-Fed 20/40 Half Wave Vertical.  The doublet
was almost always better than the vertical although
there were a few times when the vertical was clearly
better.  This was on a mountain top about 300' above
average surrounding terrain.  I did a lot of comparing
signals on both 20m and 40m during the test.

         Over flat terrain, a dipole up ~1/2 wavelength
has 7-8 dB gain over a vertical at typical 30
degree takeoff angles.  On a mountain top, the TOA
goes down because the effective height is raised.

                                         73,  Bill  W4ZV