My experience has been as follows:
I have a half-sloper hanging off a 64 foot self-supporter for 80
meters. This acts as a vertical. I have an inverted vee about 250
feet away on a 48 foot tower. Most of the time, the half sloper is 2
S-units better than the inverted vee. There has been one exception I
did notice - a few folks within a few hundred miles of me are louder
on the inverted vee. If I had to choose one antenna, it would be the
half sloper. I also added quite a few radials to the tower.
On 20, I have a 205 at 64 feet, a 204 at 50 feet and a ground mounted
vertical. Naturally, the yagis beat the vertical, hands down.
However, in the WPX contest, I had the 205 pointed at Europe, and the
204 pointed at W4. A W7 would call me, and he would be berely
readable on either yagi. Switched to the vertical, and away we went.
I used the vertical as a run antenna - at times it was comparable to
the 204 working the east coast, or down slightly. The vertical also
managed to work JA, and I broke a few EU pileups when the 205 was
pointed the wrong way.
The bottom line being - more antennas is better, and the vertical is
always pointed the right way :-) In a space limited environment, a
full size vertical for 20 with lots of radials will make for an
excellent antenna. A few other folks have also made similar
observations in comparing a vertical to a tribander. The trick being
- the verticals require a good radial system.
Tom - VE3CX
On Sun, Apr 5, 2009 at 1:03 PM, K4SAV <RadioIR@charter.net> wrote:
> AA5JG wrote: I was looking at a recent issue of CQ at the local
> bookstore tonight (it wasn't the April issue) and in a column dealing
> with semi stealth antennas, they mentioned that a 3/8 or 1/2 vertical
> will show comparable performance to a 2 element yagi. Is this true?
>
> In general, no. But it depends on the height of the Yagi. A Yagi on
> the ground doesn't work very well. Also a 3/8 or 1/2 wave vertical won't
> show any gain over a quarter wave vertical unless it has a much larger
> radial system (although the take-off angle will be lower).
>
> Considering the trade-offs, the rule for my station is vertical antennas
> for 160, horizontal antennas for 40 and up. 80 meters is a crossover
> point where either may be used.
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