Topband: Topband Digest, Vol 192, Issue 33

[W7RH]

All,

Two cents worth of comments on thread. The SAL, K9AY and Waller Flags 
all work well and have their limitations. They do help the city folk 
improve the ability to receive. The WF works great if you can get it up 
in the air and rotate it. That is if you can keep it there in one piece 
though snow , ice and wind. It also encompasses additional costs for 
tower support and rotator.

The larger passive and active arrays specifically 8 circle provided you 
have space are better yet with great RDF, realistic gain and noise figures.

There is a cross over point where there is no longer any improvement 
IMHO. I'll point out an example. In the morning hours before sun rise my 
noise floor drops to near zero on my RX/TX array. I'm extremely 
fortunate for I have the space and no neighbors, no commercial power and 
thus only natural noise. A reasonable  guess would be a noise floor 
greater than -120 to -125dB. Almost to the point of MDS where there is 
no indicated or measured difference between antenna and no antenna. 
Working signals via polar path, NW, West and SE are _on average very 
very weak._

My experience tells me that active loops would be inferior to the 
existing directional RX/TX antenna at this point because of their signal 
capture levels and increased noise created by preamplifier. In this case 
only long properly terminated and maybe phased beverages would be better.

I can feel the heat coming on this one. I'm not here to sell antennas as 
I build my own.

73 and Happy New Year!

Bob, W7RH

-- 
W7RH DM35OS


It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.

Albert Einstein