[Lowfer] Performance of Short Antennas

[Alan Melia]

Hi Jay thanks for that. However it is not everone who can afford a 300foot
mast and 120 radials. Whilst at first sight the paper comes down in favour
of umberella loading this is not directly applicable to amateur sized
antenas. The problem with their T and L top-loads is that they are short or
of the same length as the height. This completely misses the effect of the
top-load to ground capacity has on the loss resistance with amateur antenna
heights. In their case it would probably not be as dramatic as it can be in
amateur sized antennas because of their low ground resistance and multiple
radials. If I read (quickly ) the data right the umberella wires increased
the bandwidth but reduced the ERP quite considerably (6dB??) at the lower
frequencies.

Have they done anything for VLF?? It is probably unlikely but the
professional VLF antennas scale better to amateur LF formats.

Alan G3NYK