Topband: Peer Review

[Tom W8JI]

> Good points regarding my statement about "proven architecture" - I should
> have more properly stated "as proven thus far by those in the field."

Hi Jack,

At this point "proven" is far too strong of a word, or the proven part is 
not readily available.

Nothing I've read was "proven", except a new different system made some 
people happier than an old messy system, or better than a totally unknown 
system.

It's just like a Gotham vertical ad to date. :-)

New ideas are great, but things get on a very slippery slope when enthusiasm 
exceeds objectivity, and we start embellishing results based on what we all 
should know isn't good data. Unfortunately this happens time and time again.

I think the first step is explaining and verifying how a conductor can be a 
counterpoise without having external fields.

The second step in any new design is comparing it to a KNOWN working system 
with a measurement, not some random unknown messy thing by using logbook 
results.

Let me give you an example of this. I had a dipole 300 ft high on a 
broadcast tower in the 1970's. I thought it was a great antenna, even though 
my 1/4 wave vertical a few miles away tied or beat it in almost every case. 
I kept that "fact" out of my mind, because I liked the high dipole so much. 
My best contest scores were using that dipole.

I installed one here, and tried it for years, but finally realized it was a 
waste of time and operators here always did better overall with my vertical. 
Even though A-B tests in the 70's showed my vertical worked better than the 
dipole, I managed to find excuses to justify the high dipole antenna. It 
took me years, and a few contests where **one operator used the dipole and 
other used the vertical**, to fall out of love with the high dipole.

If we only used the dipole during any one contest, and could not track the 
rate with an instant antenna change, I'm sure our rate would go up year 
after year. This is because scores overall have been going up year after 
year.

I still think about trying another one. :-)


73 Tom