Topband: Modeling the proverbial "vertical on a beach"

[Tom W8JI]

> this brings back a lot of memories..........i arrived on rarotonga a week
> after a French Dxpidition did, who was set up in the K2KW motel room with
> vertical antennas on the beach just as you would imagine. the motel
> management said she was sorry, and set me up in a cottage (from the same
> motel) on the other side of the island for me and my venerable HW-16, now
> connected to a 400 foot long wire to a 100(?) foot high palm tree. i was
> across a road to the beach (75 feet from the shore?), but could on 160m
> easily hear the USA 579 two hours before sunset

Receiving is virtually always a matter of signal-to-noise ratio in the space 
around the antenna. The only cases where more antenna efficiency helps is 
when the external signal **and external noise** is so weak it is near system 
internal noise.

High conductivity earth can actually hurt S/N ratio because it extends 
ground wave far more than it changes higher angle signals.

Transmitting is a different story, if lower angles are used. I doubt, 
however, it is ever close to 10-20 dB unless it is groundwave propagation. 
I'm sure people somewhere have actual numbers on that.

73 Tom