Topband: Inverted "L" Transmitting Antennas

[Ed Swynar]

Well, just as G3XAP says in the "HF ANTENNA COLLECTION" book published by the RSGB, I too, "...found from bitter experience that the difference between a 40 ft. and a 60 ft. vertical on 160 can be quite colossal!"

In my instance, the difference in vertical heights here --- "before & after" re-locating my "L" for the better part of the day yesterday --- was some 42' ("...before") vs. some 70' ("...after")...and WHAT adifference it made, too, performance-wise...

Last night in casual operating I worked CO8, PJ2, LY3, OM2, SM5, HA9, OM5, OH2, and DJ0. I have NEVER done that before with the "truncated" L that I was using. The REAL icing on the cake, however, happened this morning, when I worked KL7C, for my final State in 160-meter WAS!

I've come to the conclusion that a limited-height "L" WILL get you results as you add more radials, but then that's it --- for the NEXT level of performance, you simply have to increase the vertical portion of the antenna. I think it may have helped in my case, too, that the "L" is elevated by virtue of a tree now --- before, the vertical wire ran up parallel to a self-supporting steel tower, with a separation of only a couple of feet...

The 200' feet of coax feeder hasn't seemed to deterred the signal to any degree --- I expected it would have, because the length increased by a factor of 20 over the previous installation. This couldn't be helped, due to the geography of my property...

See you in the pile-ups...!

~73~ Eddy VE3CUI - VE3XZ