[Elecraft] OT: Ground Loss (long)

[Fred Jensen]

True, at least from my experience.  If you're on a pointy part of the 
Earth [aka summit such as in SOTA], the far field effects can and often 
do lower the max elevation angle to or below the apparent horizon.  Most 
antennas on summits exhibit a host of other inefficiencies as well, but 
the effect is there.  I used a vertical GP with my Buddipole on summits 
only because the horizontal OCF loaded dipole configuration was worse.

One thing that hasn't been mentioned is noise on RX.  It seems like the 
preponderance of man-made noise is vertically [more or less] polarized. 
  Until last Sunday, I had a Gap Titan on the roof.  Good antenna, very 
low SWR on all its bands. Nearly all the time, noise was 1-3 S-units 
higher than on my tribander or dipoles.  I did keep checking because 
occasionally, mainly on 12 and 10, it was lower than the TB.  Man-made 
noise may not be a problem in a remote, back-packing environment of course.

73,

Fred K6DGW
- Northern California Contest Club
- CU in the 50th Running of the Cal QSO Party 3-4 Oct 2015
- www.cqp.org


On 7/23/2015 4:30 PM, Don Wilhelm wrote:

> For the lower frequency bands, the height of a dipole
> with those characteristics is not practical for most hams and the
> vertical wins "hands down" for DX - provided a good radial field or
> elevated radials are used.
>
> 73,
> Don W3FPR