> Is the 100' height a good one? A person who has been contesting for a
long time suggested that anything over 70/80' was overkill. That really
surprised me. As a novice, I simply thought the higher the better, period.
(except for eskip on 6) The immediate property I'm on is high and fairly
flat. As you go away about a 1/4 mile in all directions, the land slopes
down gently. Beyond a 1/2 mile, the land is rolling hills, none of which is
substantially higher than the QTH we now live at.
You might want to check out SPLAT! (Surface Path Length And Terrain analysis
application.) Plug in your latitude and longitude and run some analyses at
different heights above ground to see if your line-of-sight coverage changes
radically at different heights. If you're over all the terrain obstacles
out
to several miles at 80', maybe going up to 100' isn't worth it.
http://www.qsl.net/kd2bd/splat.html
I would think that for single-hop Eskip on 6 meters, you would want at least
one horizontally polarized antenna at 25-30'.
> Here's what I want/envision as of now: As for 6 meters, I don't see
much point in going crazy here with the sunspot cycle heading down. A 6M5X
at about 30' will do eskip. If I'm missing a lot of tropo capability by not
having another 6M5X (or heck, I could do a 6M7JHV as well) way up high, tell
me about it.
A high six meter yagi is great for working rovers. Most rovers have poorer
antennas on six meters than they have on two meters, so the more that you
can do to compensate on your end, the better.
--
Ken,
Never heard of SPLAT! until I saw it in your email. Very cool. Can I run
it without Linux? Only MS Windows OS's here. Thanks,
Jason
KB5URQ
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