Topband: Pennants......

[Stephen Reichlyn]

Hello, Earl, K6SE:

Just a quick question re our favorite subject, Pennants. It was obvious to 
N4SF and I last week-end in the CQWW
160 CW that our two pennants (One NE and one W) outperformed our short 
unterminated beverages. We now
believe that additional pennants need to be erected here. Is there any 
information out there with regard
to the beamwidth of a classical pennant (mounted on a 20 foot pole with the 
bottom at 6 feet). If I erect 4
pennants, point-to-point, fed through DPDT switching fully isolating the 
inactive antennas, if I orient
them NE-NW-SE-SW, would that give me fairly decent coverage over the 360 
degree azimuth? Do you
think adjacent buildings (wood and/or stucco construction) effectively 
block some signal to the
pennants (the building are two-three stories and are within 25 feet of the 
antenna array). I do realize that the
problem of full coverage can be solved by a rotatable pennant or flag but 
in a contest situation, the rotation
would be much too slow.....a motorized switch continuously sampling the 
various receiving directions (or even
switching by hand) would be much more helpful. As always, any comments 
would be much appreciated.

73,
Steve AA4V
Isle of Palms, SC


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