[Lowfer] LF reception and other misc stuff

[Douglas D. Williams]

I have had about 1.6 acres of land to work with since 1991. From that
time until now, approximately 1 acre of that has been "lawn" and the other
0.6 acres has been heavily wooded. In the next month or so, I am going to
hire a man with a bulldozer, chainsaw, flatbed truck, and some helpers to
clear out the wooded portion of my property. Once he is finished, I will
plant some grass and throw some straw.

My most recent receiving antenna has been an active whip antenna mounted on
a 10' mast about 50' from my house, but (unfortunately) only about 20' from
the nearest trees. Once the work is finished in the next month or so, I
expect the active whip to be about 30' from the nearest trees.

It would be rather trivial to raise the active whip another ten to twenty
feet via an additional one or two ten foot section of galvanized mast. I
have that much coax coiled up in my "shack", so I wouldn't even have to
splice anything. My question is, is it worth doing? Do you gentlemen think
that raising the Clifton Labs active antenna another ten to twenty
feet would produce a better signal-to-noise ratio?

My property is at the very top of a hill (probably a "mountain" to you
flatlanders). The biggest concern I would have by making this change would
be the increased chance of a direct lightning strike to the antenna,
especially considering that raising it another twenty feet, in combination
with removing a bunch of trees, would make the antenna the tallest
structure on the hill.

Any advice is appreciated.

The Clifton Labs documentation states that raising the base of the active
antenna beyond about ten feet is unnecessary.

Doug - KB4OER