Topband: Inverted L improvement question

[Jeff Woods]

 Wes,
A sure sign that your RX antennas are good enough is when DX stations that are Q5 copy repeatedly CQ in your face. 

What Mike's saying is true; trying to make a silk purse out of the sow's ear that is a TX vertical is a losing game.  Waller Flags, K9AYs, EWEs, etc. are all cheap and can easily be constructed to fit a 1.7 acre lot.  A short beverage may even feasible in that space, depending on the layout. 
When you speak of "QRM from the east," are you talking about being unable to overpower it on TX so the DX can hear you (my problem here), or are you speaking of RX QRM?  On RX at your QTH, it doesn't appear that the proverbial East Coast Wall should affect you much.  The azimuth to Europe from Tucson is ~30 degrees.  That GC path runs across the upper Midwest and Ontario.   Even a mediocre K9AY will provide adequate attenuation to signals from the US east coast.

My NW RX antenna is centered at 42 degrees.  Here in Iowa, it hears much better to Europe than to Boston or New York.  Indeed, it's nearly useless in the ARRL 160 contest because of that pattern unless I'm in Province hunting mode.
-Jeff (W0ODS)

    On Saturday, December 22, 2018, 6:09:23 PM CST, Mike Waters <mikewate at gmail.com> wrote:  
 
 How about a Waller flag? Better than a Beverage, since you can rotate it!

Search for *Waller* or *Waller flag* in the Topband archives. Lots of
information there, with a link to the N4IS page about them.

73, Mike
www.w0btu.com

On Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 4:20 PM Wes Stewart <wes_n7ws at triconet.org> wrote:

> I just drove down to the local convenience store and bought some Powerball
> tickets.  If I win, there's a nice 80 acre parcel across the street from me
> that I would buy.  Until then, I'm stuck on a 1.7 acre plot with no room
> for beverages.
>
> Wes  N7WS
>
> On 12/22/2018 1:20 PM, Mike Waters wrote:
>
> Hi Wes,
>
> Once you try a Beverage, you'll realize that those antennas weren't
> hearing the weak ones that called you. ;-) See
> http://www.w0btu.com/Beverage_antennas.html.
>
>
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