[Elecraft] Is it just me?

[Jim Brown]

No question about that.  My 6M antenna is at the other end of 350 ft of 
LDF5-50, 0.9 dB loss. It's a SteppIR, so I also use it for legal limit 
on the HF bands. So my preamp is in the shack. If it was practical for 
me to install a dedicated 6M antenna at 120 ft (which is where the 
SteppIR is), I would. But it isn't practical.

It's important to realize that every engineering problem is different, 
most solutions are compromises, and which set of compromises are best 
for any given situation depend on many factors. In this case, real 
estate, the cost of another tower, somewhere to put another tower, the 
hard line that I can scrounge used at a good price, etc.  And yes, I'd 
love the extra 2-3 dB that a better 6M antenna would provide.

73, Jim K9YC

On Wed,1/25/2017 4:54 PM, Ken Arck wrote:
> So if you place a preamp with a NF of .5 dB at the "rig end" of a 
> feedline run that exhibits 3 dB of loss at the frequency involved, you 
> now have an effective noise figure of 3.5 dB ahead of your receiver. 
> Placing the preamp at the antenna has an obvious advantage of reducing 
> that NF by 3 dB.