Topband
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: Topband: Topband Digest, Vol 192, Issue 33

To: topband@contesting.com
Subject: Re: Topband: Topband Digest, Vol 192, Issue 33
From: W7RH <midnight18@cox.net>
Date: Sat, 29 Dec 2018 05:04:42 +0000
List-post: <mailto:topband@contesting.com>
All,

Two cents worth of comments on thread. The SAL, K9AY and Waller Flags all work well and have their limitations. They do help the city folk improve the ability to receive. The WF works great if you can get it up in the air and rotate it. That is if you can keep it there in one piece though snow , ice and wind. It also encompasses additional costs for tower support and rotator.

The larger passive and active arrays specifically 8 circle provided you have space are better yet with great RDF, realistic gain and noise figures.

There is a cross over point where there is no longer any improvement IMHO. I'll point out an example. In the morning hours before sun rise my noise floor drops to near zero on my RX/TX array. I'm extremely fortunate for I have the space and no neighbors, no commercial power and thus only natural noise. A reasonable  guess would be a noise floor greater than -120 to -125dB. Almost to the point of MDS where there is no indicated or measured difference between antenna and no antenna. Working signals via polar path, NW, West and SE are _on average very very weak._

My experience tells me that active loops would be inferior to the existing directional RX/TX antenna at this point because of their signal capture levels and increased noise created by preamplifier. In this case only long properly terminated and maybe phased beverages would be better.

I can feel the heat coming on this one. I'm not here to sell antennas as I build my own.

73 and Happy New Year!

Bob, W7RH

--
W7RH DM35OS


It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.

Albert Einstein

_________________
Searchable Archives: http://www.contesting.com/_topband - Topband Reflector
<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>