[TenTec] OT: Working DX on 160m with low dipoles

[Jim Brown]

Steve,

Good point. I don't disagree that there are exceptions like this, but 
for most paths at most times, low angle paths predominate.

If you study the tutorial I referenced, you'll see that a height between 
a quarter wave and 3/8 wave is near ideal for high angle work. That's 
130 - 200 ft on 160. Horizontal antennas suffer increasingly greater 
ground losses as height is reduced.

73, Jim K9YC

On Tue,8/19/2014 10:25 PM, Steve Ireland wrote:
> “Low dipoles on 160m are pretty worthless for working DX”
>
> ------------------------
>
> As the song goes, “it ain’t necessarily so”.  A lot depends upon your ground conductivity, geomagnetic latitude and what time of night you transmit at.
>
> I have 320 countries worked on 160m from VK6, basically all with ‘low dipoles’ (ranging from 30 to 90 feet in height), mainly worked close to sunrise/sunset (i.e. plus or minus fifteen minutes) when high angle propagation often dominates over low angle. One of my best contacts with a 45’ high dipole was VP5/WA2VYA, who was away from the sea and running about 100W to a inverted vee dipole about 15’ high. I was operating just after my sunset and he was very close to his sunrise – and a solid RST 559.