Well, just as G3XAP says in the "HF ANTENNA COLLECTION" book published by the
RSGB, I too, "...found from bitter experience that the difference between a 40
ft. and a 60 ft. vertical on 160 can be quite colossal!"
In my instance, the difference in vertical heights here --- "before & after"
re-locating my "L" for the better part of the day yesterday --- was some 42'
("...before") vs. some 70' ("...after")...and WHAT adifference it made, too,
performance-wise...
Last night in casual operating I worked CO8, PJ2, LY3, OM2, SM5, HA9, OM5, OH2,
and DJ0. I have NEVER done that before with the "truncated" L that I was using.
The REAL icing on the cake, however, happened this morning, when I worked KL7C,
for my final State in 160-meter WAS!
I've come to the conclusion that a limited-height "L" WILL get you results as
you add more radials, but then that's it --- for the NEXT level of performance,
you simply have to increase the vertical portion of the antenna. I think it may
have helped in my case, too, that the "L" is elevated by virtue of a tree now
--- before, the vertical wire ran up parallel to a self-supporting steel tower,
with a separation of only a couple of feet...
The 200' feet of coax feeder hasn't seemed to deterred the signal to any degree
--- I expected it would have, because the length increased by a factor of 20
over the previous installation. This couldn't be helped, due to the geography
of my property...
See you in the pile-ups...!
~73~ Eddy VE3CUI - VE3XZ
_______________________________________________
Topband mailing list
Topband@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/topband
|