>The pattern of the VOA curtains has to be seen to be believed -- 22.5 dBi
>forward gain, for example.
My four-stack of 8 element Yagis on 10M comes pretty close to
that number with ground reflection gain. (Good enough for up to
15 d/B S/N on 10M EME.)
When conditions are a bit disturbed, our (Colorado) opening to
Europe starts out to the SOUTH EAST and moves (if we are
lucky) to the north east after the first hour or two. During low
sunspot numbers if we get any Europe at all on 10M it may only
be scatter to the south east. In any case, having a FIXED array
pointed north east to Europe would be problematic for many
of our openings. Give me a good rotary stack (with elevation
control--although I typically only see lobe elevation being useful
on things closer than VO from Colorado on 10 M) and I can work
BOTH Europe and JA and everything in between.
Unless you are doing point to point communications the cost
of multiple fixed arrays is just too great to compete with stacked
monoband Yagis (or tri-banders, for that matter--my four stack
of TH-7s won plaques on 20M in both contests (97 CQWW CW
and 98 ARRL CW) that we entered). And that is from COLORADO!
John--W0UN
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