Topband: A newbie question

donovanf at starpower.net donovanf at starpower.net
Tue Mar 18 14:19:21 EDT 2014


Hi Tom, 

Welcome to topband! As you gain experience you will encounter 
many situations where your transmit antenna is inadequate for 
receiving. An excellent receiving antenna can provide as much as 
10 dB improvement compared to an omnidirectional vertical 
transmitting antenna, not only in terms of signal to noise ratio, but also 
significantly improved ability to receive through pileup QRM and 
intentional or accidental QRM. 

Do you have adequate space for a receiving antenna? As with all things 
involving antennas, size matters... 

The highest performance receiving arrays such as the Hi-Z monoband 
active 8-circle array (200 foot diameter) or the W8JI/W5ZN/N4HY 
passive 8-circle array (350 foot diameter) require an acre or more well 
away from transmitting antennas. They provide truly astounding 
receiving improvement, but the expense and effort to install them is 
much greater than for smaller arrays. 

Small receiving antennas including the Array Solutions SAL-30, K9AY 
loops or flag antennas offer significant improvement at modest effort 
and cost, but they require only a 36 foot diameter circle. 

Perhaps the simplest receiving antenna is a Beverage, offering quite good 
performance for an investment of only a few hours work but they require 
at least 500 feet of length to obtain significant performance improvement 
compared to the popular small receiving arrays. W8JI has perhaps the 
largest Beverage array in use on topband, three 900 foot phased 
Beverages spaced 300 feet from each other. 

73 
Frank 
W3LPL 





----- Original Message -----

From: wa8wzg at wa8wzg.net 
To: "TopBand" <topband at contesting.com> 
Sent: Tuesday, March 18, 2014 3:45:53 PM 
Subject: Topband: A newbie question 

To all,,, I am relatively new to 160,,, I work the vhf/uhf/Eme spectrum,so I am used to weak signal work,, I just moved to arizona,and decided to try 160!!,. I had no problem working the HS0 yesterday morning , but I could not hear the XV7 this morning,,I heard a lot of my "neighbors" working him... Could anyone give me any info on his xmit power and what type of receiving antenna those of you who worked him, were using?? Thanks!! 
Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry® 
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