>....
> I also have a 65 foot vertical made from 3/4 inch copper water pipe at
> ground level. It has no radials, only a ground rod, and it well...sucks, I
> hardly ever use it unless I don't want to make a contact. I do think
> though that if I invested the time into putting a number of radials down,
> the vertical would begin to work better. I highly doubt though that it
> will ever outperform the zepp antennas.
>....
>
Paul (KG7HF)
________
Radials for verticals make all the difference in the world, just like height
does for horizontal antennas. Before writing off verticals, note one of my
experiences:
In 1985 after moving to Colorado, the first antenna installed was a 40M
rotatable dipole, but only at about 35-40 feet. It was dead ... like Paul's
vertical with no radials. Radiating straight up is no better than putting
power into lossy ground.
I re-arranged the antenna as a classic ground plane with a 1/4-wave vertical
section starting at 25 feet and three sloping radials. This was a fine
one-element antenna. Later, I added a second ground plane spaced about 165
deg. with five phasing settings. For DX, the array was only slightly behind
other local hams with 2 element beams at 70 feet.
I might note that the array was designed with the help of MININEC on an
early Compaq PC -- 4.77 MHz CPU clock, and one of the floppy disks upgraded
to a 5 MB hard drive!
73, Gary
K9AY
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