TopBand: inverted-L versus dipole

w8jitom@postoffice.worldnet.att.net w8jitom@postoffice.worldnet.att.net
Mon, 20 Oct 1997 09:34:40 +0000


> To:            <topband@contesting.com>

W2EQS / 9 W9NFC (Charlie SK) worked DXCC with a low dipole, but he 
was usually five S units weaker than me (he was in Indiana, I was in 
Toledo).

Here in Georgia with rocky clay (4 mS/m) my vertical still 
skunked a dipole at 100 ft. 

Perhaps this is because all of my verticals always used good radial 
systems.

> Sometimes a good low horizontal can be better than a good high vertical -if
> your soil is poor, maybe most of the time.  My bent low dipole has got me
> over 90 countries on 160m.

I'm not so sure anecdotal "I worked X country" reports mean 
anything at all in the long run. Working DX is a matter of time and 
persistence, more so than ten or twenty dB of signal strength. After 
all, I've worked VK's who were mobile and worked VK's from my mobile 
on 160...and antennas like that are only about one percent 
efficient at best! 

Listening to DX since 1963 on 160, the outstanding signals always 
been from verticals. Not that low horizontals can't be heard, they 
can be. Just not as well.  

73, Tom W8JI

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