[TowerTalk] Urban verticals and dipoles

[Rob Atkinson, K5UJ]

I operate with a Gap Titan vertical and an open wire center fed flattop.  
I'm on a small city lot (100' x 50') with the ususal clutter:  aluminum 
siding, power lines etc.  I put the vertical up on a 15' pipe to get it up a 
bit.  It's feedpoint is about 15' above its base so it's almost 30' high 
(40' total) and does a pretty good job of clearing a lot of the obstructions 
which I think is especially important on the higher HF bands.

The flattop is about 30' high so a lot of the RF goes straight up.  Even so 
it way outperforms the vertical in most of North America on 40 meters.  The 
vertical shows an edge beyond 2 or 3 thousand miles.  Not sure about the 
higher bands because the times I get to operate are usually when they aren't 
open.  I don't even use the vertical anymore on 75 but the Gap Titan was 
never known for being a great 75 m. antenna anyway.  The horizontal wire 
picks up about 5 S units less noise on the low HF bands also.

Rob Atkinson
K5UJ

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