[Elecraft] 80 Metre Verticals

[Jim Brown]

Hi Chuck,

In general, with lousy ground, horizontally polarized antennas RULE!  
The earth interacts with verticals in two ways. First, the soil under 
the vertical is a big resistor, burning TX power. Second, where the 
first reflection hits the earth (in the far field) reinforces the direct 
wave to form the vertical pattern. When ground conductivity is poor, 
that reflection is weak.

By contrast, horizontally polarized antennas are only very slightly 
affected by ground losses, and then only almost straight up.

i also have poor soil conductivity (Santa Cruz Mountains). I use 
verticals ONLY on 160M, where even a dipole at 140 ft in my redwoods is 
a low dipole electrically. When I first moved here, I had both. For a 
year or so, I made a lot of A/B comparisons between them, and the 
vertical nearly always won. About five years ago, the horizontal dipole 
came down in a storm, and I didn't even consider putting it back up.

One of my 160 verticals is a Tee with a lot of radials. As an 
experiment, I hung a 67 ft vertical wire over the same radials for 80M. 
My high dipoles blew it away.

In general, horizontal antennas on mountaintops don't need to be very 
high to work really well. I've done FD QRP several times from 
mountaintops using dipoles that were only 25-30 ft off the ground, and 
made QSOs to the midwest and east coast.

73, Jim K9YC

73, Jim K9YC

On Tue,2/28/2017 12:51 PM, Chuck Chandler wrote:
> So... if I am planning to move to the high desert of New Mexico in a few
> years, what is the best low-band antenna option?  I've used verticals over
> lots of radials in Massachusetts and Mississippi with good success, but if
> I'm up 6500 feet and the water table is WAY down there... what, a dipole?