Topband: Summary: Short Vertical on 160M, improving efficiency

[Chip Owens]

So many have replied and offered helpful suggestions. Thanks to all!

The overwhelming majority suggested getting the top loading wires 
horizontal instead of sloping. Apparently the sloping wires cancel out 
some of the radiation from the vertical. Several said to add a skirt 
wire around the top loading wires.

Many people suggested  *increasing*  top loading using more wires or by 
adding a loading coil closer to the top of the antenna and reducing or 
eliminating the base loading inductor with its losses.

A variation of this answer is to change over to an inverted-L or a "T" 
configuration.

One guy suggested feeding the antenna from the top, thanks Greg!

Another said to make the antenna fatter, perhaps with multiple parallel 
wires.

Many said to improve the ground system as much as possible.

Some people said it was probably about as good as it will get for a 
short antenna and suggested just  running more power. To date I have 
been running 100 watts output power.

Overall the suggestions have been very helpful and I really appreciate 
the responses . I'm going to see if I can't get the top loading wires 
closer to a horizontal orientation and then get rid of the shorted turns 
in the loading coil and hopefully (with more top loading) make the 
loading coil smaller. If this doesn't pan out then an inverted-L is 
probably the next step.

Thanks again to everyone,
Chip, NW0O