[CQ-Contest] DX Sprint is a good idea

[Steve Root]

Hi Nat,

I've heard it many, many times where a small station on the East Coast is
giving a big signal report to a DX station that can't be heard at all out
here.  If the guy is 20 over 9 on the Coast and inaudible here, what kind of
an antenna do I put up that has 30 db gain?  I think your estimate of stack
gain over a dipole is pretty optimistic.  There's a lot more to this than
apparent gain figures of different antennas.

I also do a lot of DXing.  I've sat in pileups and listened to East Coast
MOBILES waltz right through.

Look at the published list of signal reports from Europe after a DX contest.
One of the biggest stations around here, W0AIH, is always way down the list
in spite of the fact that they have big stacks at height.

I'm afraid we're going to be in disagreement over this one, Nat.  It's a
different world out here and you can't compenstate for it with bigger
antennas.

73 Steve K0SR


----- Original Message -----
From: Nat Heatwole <nat at ajheatwole.com>
To: <cq-contest at contesting.com>
Sent: Monday, March 22, 2004 11:39 PM
Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] DX Sprint is a good idea


> > " I'd much rather be in the Midwest with stacks than in New England
> with
> > dipoles."
> >
> > Apparently you've never operated from the Midwest.
> >
> > 73 Steve K0SR
>
> Apparently you've never operated from the East Coast with dipoles.
>
> A yagi can have on the order of 10dB more gain than a dipole at the same
> height. When stacks are involved, one now has the ability to control the
> take off angle which can result in 40dB more gain depending on the
> propagation. That means that stacks can be up to 50dB louder than a
> single dipole at a modest height. And this figure doesn't even encompass
> all of the other benefits of stacks: the ability to attenuate rain and
> snow static, the ability to beam in more than one direction at once, and
> there are no nulls off the side of the antenna to worry about (assuming
> that the beams rotate).
>
> One may lose a lot operating from being in the Midwest as opposed to the
> East Coast, but I don't think that it's worth 50dB. I don't know of too
> many operators who could, using dipoles on the East Coast, beat out
> stations like W9RE, WB9Z, W0AIH, N9RV, N0NI, K8CC, K3LR, or the like the
> majority of the time.
>
> 73!
> Nat - WZ3AR
>
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