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Topband: Comparison testing

To: <topband@contesting.com>
Subject: Topband: Comparison testing
From: "Tom W8JI" <w8ji@w8ji.com>
Reply-to: Tom W8JI <w8ji@w8ji.com>
Date: Wed, 6 Mar 2013 13:25:42 -0500
List-post: <topband@contesting.com">mailto:topband@contesting.com>
This reminds me of an experience I had with a new antenna. After working several days installing a new antenna, I attached it to an a/b switch to compare it with my old antenna. I was delighted, the new antenna was always better !!! Then to my dismay I saw I had the switch reversed ... oh boy... I changed the feeds, and continued the test. Guess what.. the new antenna was still always better.
Lesson learned .... human nature and switching antennas in face of QSB.>>>

There is more truth to that than most of us realize.

I put up a G5RV about 100 feet in the air, and I used a pretty good feedline. Doing tests against a dipole on 75 meters, the antenna I called a "G5RV" would almost always get a worse report than the antenna I called a "dipole", even during the times when I called the antennas by the opposite names of what they really were.

When I would do a test using "antenna 1" or "antenna 2", they were almost even.

The most extraordinary thing was with a good friend who just absolutely hated G5RV antennas. He would say "your audio sounds worse on the "G5RV" " . This was true even when I called the dipole a G5RV, or didn't change antennas at all and just said I was changing.

I really think this is why I installed a 300-foot tower just so I could have a high dipole. I "distinctly remembered' how well a 300-foot high dipole I had worked, and I wanted another one. After I installed the dipole here and compared it to a vertical and other antennas for a year or two, I finally remembered how well my old 1/4 wave vertical worked. :)

This was eye opening to me.

73 Tom
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