[TowerTalk] Tree attenuation

[Tom Rauch]

> I operated a MARS station (AB8AH - 1st Bde 1st Inf Div) in
Phouc Vinh than
> in Quan Loi, Viet Nam during 1967 and 1968.  There were no
trees at both
> locations near our towers (100 ft Rohn 25G and a 70 ft
commercial tower)
> except for 1 palm tree (about 20 ft and 1 10 ft banana
tree). Our site
> worked very well, we ran approximately 1,100 to 1,200
phone patches a month.
> A sister station, AB8AAB, 2nd Bde of the 1st Inf Div was
located in a rubber
> plantation (jungle environment)at Lai Khe.  Their wire
beam was suspended
> from the rubber trees.  They were lucky to run 50 phone
patches a month.

Hi Fred,

Respectfully, there are far too many variables involved to
say how much or even if the trees bothered anything. The
only way to tell how much difference the trees actually make
would be to use exactly the same location and installation
with the tress and then without the trees and measure the FS
change over a stable path.

Everything I have observed is trees make very little
difference at lower HF. My last house had vertical antennas
nestled in trees, and everything appeared to work as well as
any other stations in pileups. I can't imagine a horizontal
antenna being worse.

73 Tom