[TowerTalk] NVIS antennas Re: dumbing down

[W0UN -- John Brosnahan]

>
>
>Whatever it is, the goal on practical antennas for field comm is not
>necessarily to make the "best performing antenna", but to make an
>"adequately performing antenna" that meets all the other requirements.  It
>might well be that they're willing to give up 10 dB of loss in exchange for
>adding a 500W SSPA.  They're not going for maximum miles per milliwatt QRPP
>contesting.


I once put up an ionospheric sounding antenna in Puerto Rico that was a
complex wire array to cover 2- 30 MHz and it was strung between two 100 ft
towers that I had installed in a flooded field.  The effort to 
install two towers
in knee deep water was a real PITA.  But the antenna did a good job and
the scientists were pleased with the results.  And I was pleased because I
had done a good job on a "serious" array under trying circumstances.

A couple of years later I was in Alaska working on another project and a
university group had a 2-30 MHz ionospheric sounder that feed a dipole that
was made from two 10 ft long pieces of 6 inch diameter irrigation tubing and
this dipole was sitting on wooden blocks on the ground.  The center of
the dipole was about 3 inches off the ground (actually the pavement) and
the tips were about 8 inches off the pavement with about 15 ft of feed line.
This antenna also got good results for the intended experiment and was
a heck of a lot easier to install.

Sure it was inefficient, but it did the job and it took 10 minutes to install
instead of two weeks and it was a heck of a lot easier to transport two
10 ft pieces of aluminum tubing than to transport two 100 ft towers plus all
of the wire array.

Personally I have always been a firm believer in the philosophy of "Too much
is just enough."  As in "If a little does a little good, and a lot 
does a lot of good,
then too much is just enough."  But in actuality  "Good enough is all you
really need."

W0UN

"Nothing exceeds like excess!"