[TowerTalk] Discone Radiation Angle ?

[Jim Lux]

At 10:05 AM 12/13/2004, douglas.snowden at med.va.gov wrote:
>I have not gotten into antenna modleing enough to have done this, but does a
>Discone
>antenna have a low radiation angle or not?  I don't think I have ever heard
>of anyone
>actually using one on HF.
>
>
>Doug N4IJ
>

There was an article a while back in QST, or an antenna compendium, or the 
antenna book describing an HF discone (skirt of many radials from tall 
pole, etc.)
There have been some radio telescopes built with discones and other similar 
frequency independent antennas.

It's a vertically polarized antenna, and one would expect it to have 
radiation patterns much like any other vertically polarized antenna of 
similar size.  One virtue of discones is that they are wideband.

This virtue is less useful for ham applications, where the bands are fairly 
limited, and the modulation even more so.  One can achieve essentially the 
same radiation efficiency with a much smaller antenna (i.e. some form of 
vertical) with low loss tuned circuits to get the feedpoint impedances right.