I thought the discussion was just on using Stainless Steel for antenna wire and
someone used an example to show that it is done. But, since you brought it
up...
I would venture to say that the B&W BWD 2-25 works better than a buried wire.
In fact, I have accidentally loaded up my ground rod with radials before and I
could hear very few stations, if any. And I can hear a lot of stations on my
B&W antenna. Sure, transmitting on the B&W some power gets dissipated in the
termination resistor - so what? It's not the only antenna out there that uses a
termination resistor, or whatever they choose to call it. I guess you could
call it a leaky dummy load too. There are a lot of other factors involved in
putting a signal in the air and receiving one. That's the REAL world, and then
there is the theory. For my station, sometimes the B&W is better, sometimes
it's my vertical...it "depends". So maybe it is whatever fits your
requirements. After trying a number of antennas at my aluminum sided, housing
project lot, low elevation, limited space, mast pipe supported antenna QTH, I
have a least one coax fed antenna that will "adequately" cov!
er all the HF spectrum (admittedly poorly on 160), plus a vertical that covers
some of the bands. And signal reports, at least for me, except 160, don't
reflect much different than the other antennas I have used and are somtimes
better, sometimes worse than other operators receive from the same station.
Oh, and I normally use anywhere from 15 to 50 watts output, no problem. Most
of the time it doesn't take much...
Now, I didn't know that government radio operators are not "normal radio
people"? I have met some, and used to work at, I guess you could call it a
government radio site (Emergency Management/Communications), so I'm not sure
what that means. Most of the folks I met through there were knowledgeable and
well educated and/or experienced. But then, maybe that isn't "normal".
73 de Mark N8COO
A.A.S., E.E.T.
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