[TowerTalk] Dipole questions for the Liberal Arts Major

[Tom Rauch]

> reasonable SWR. This antenna is a cloud burner, not a DX
antenna.  It is
> more omnidirectional than a dipole, and slightly less gain
compared to
> the broadside direction of a dipole.

Wave angle is determined by height, ground characteristics,
and polarization of the antenna.

Bowtie or not, pattern shape is not significantly different
than a regular dipole. For all purposes, even picking nits,
they are the same. That's even true for an "X " dipole where
the X acts essentially like a regular dipole with legs
centered between active wires.

An essentially "omni" pattern (not truly omni, but close)
occurs only when an X dipole has elements fed with
quadrature phase. In other words the two crossed dipole
elements have to be fed someplace near 90 degrees
out-of-phase.
Even that doesn't make it a cloud warmer, height and ground
characteristics set the elevation pattern.

73 Tom