Hi Chuck,
As Tom Schiller N6BT wrote in his QST article two years ago, "Everything
Works," and he used a post-mounted light bulb as an example. W6ISQ recently
reported (also in QST, just a month or two ago) working a contest using his
Cantenna dummy load sitting on the floor. Everything does work, it's all a
matter of relativity.
I never judge an antenna by how much DX I can work with it; I judge it
against other antennas. It pays to have multiple antennas, and a switch. I
broke through a small pileup to work 9J2CA in Zambia on Sunday morning (20m
CW) using a 20" long "E-H" antenna mounted on a 4' PVC pipe on my roof
(stuck in a ventpipe). He came right back to my 90W and 3/100ths wavelength
long antenna. When I switched to the 6BTV with radials, signals both ways
improved more than 20 dB, and when I switched to my beam, signals improved
another 6 dB or so. So, the E-H, which busted a pileup on 9J2 (I'm in Los
Angeles), is about 26 dB down from my regular 20m antenna. But it certainly
works, and I was getting pileups calling ME, simply because I'm in
California and the Cal QSO Party was going on. Obviously, everybody already
worked everybody, and I was a new signal...
WB2WIK/6
"If everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough." -
Mario Andretti
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Chuck Counselman [SMTP:ccc@space.mit.edu]
> Sent: Tuesday, October 08, 2002 10:15 PM
> To: towertalk@contesting.com
> Subject: RE: [Towertalk] choices
>
> At 1:16 PM -0700 10/8/02, Steve Katz wrote:
> >I wouldn't mount a G5RV as an inverted vee; actually a G5RV's not
> >much of an antenna on 80m at all, so I wouldn't bother with it.
>
>
> It's not _all_ bad. My G5RV in the shape of an inverted "U" only 30
> feet high and my friend W1NU's G5RV in the shape of an inverted "V"
> 55 feet high at its apex both work well on both 80 and 40 meters (as
> well as 20, 17, 15, 12, and 10 m).
>
> How well? On 80 m transmitting just 5 watts I worked the UK several
> times last *summer*. On 40 m transmitting 10 watts I worked the UK
> and several countries in Europe. On 40 m transmitting 100 to 200
> watts I worked all continents except Antarctica (which I did work on
> 20 and 17 m).
>
> 73 de Chuck, W1HIS
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