[Milsurplus] Car whip or any antenna gain and PT Barnum was right

[kgordon2006]

Good on ya, Charlie! One of my main antennas is a 55' vertical. It has a 40 meter trap 33' up and gives me a 2:1 SWR on all non-WARC bands. Even so, I use a good tuner with it, a Heathkit 2060A.It is really 1/2 of a W3DZZ all-band dipole set on end.I have 30 on-ground radials.I have used it for many years. Using a base-loading-coil, I have used it on 160 to work Europe with 100 watts.Verticals are OK, but in my experience, are noisier than horizontal antennas.They also exhibit -2 db (that is MINUS 2 db,) "gain" over a dipole.Ha ha! :-)They have two "advantages" over other simple antennas: 1) low angle radiation, and 2) omni-directionality.Ken W7EKB.Sent via the Samsung Galaxy S21 5G, an AT&T 5G smartphone
-------- Original message --------From: "Charlie L." <mjcal79 at gmail.com> Date: 8/24/25  09:39  (GMT-08:00) To: milsurplus at mailman.qth.net Subject: [Milsurplus] Car whip or any antenna gain and PT Barnum was right The ARRL and QST  when it was good, quit doing reports on commercial antennas a long time ago, the manufacturers did not like them being honest and they caught holy heck from members who bought antennas that they dissed.   Today they seem to have changed their mind, but the reports today are pretty nebulous.  I have had a 43ft vertical for decades with radials and  a homebrew remote tuner at its base.  As a matter of fact, it was a commercial unit made in the late 1930's complete with cast aluminum base and brown 2 part porcelain insulator.   When MFJ came out with their 43ft vertical and a couple other folks including DX Engineering,  they said it needed no radials and no tuning.  This was so bogus, I wondered who could make such a claim.  At Dayton one year, DX Engineering had a big spread and I asked one of their experts about their claim and that of other 43ft ant sellers,  about no radials and no tuning. He then explained to me the modern ham operator.  His take was that if the internal tuner in the modern rig would make a match, the modern operator was happy.  If he could make contacts, he would be happy.  If he had a match and could make contacts the antenna was the best thing since sliced bread, and he ended up with the clincher of a statement.  He said they can 'Work everyone they can hear", not realizing they ain't hearing much.  PT Barnum summed it up a century ago, "A sucker born every minute".Charlie in NC 
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