[TowerTalk] Antenna stuff

[Dennis OConnor]

This is a copy of my post to the 3830 reflector....  
  
   FT1000 MK-V transceiver - TRLOG - and an old 256K Pentium with  Windows 98... One really old op with bad hearing, lousy CW skills, and  Alwhatshisname's disease who drove from 3 states away on Friday to get  home in time for the contest...
  
  I use CQWW for antenna testing, nor really for contesting - as you can  tell from the qso to country ratio... This years test antenna, a 2  element vertical array, is the best yet doubling last years country  count... The reference antenna is, as always, the dipole at 120 feet,  hanging in the North-South direction...  Europe is at a 45 degree  angle to the pattern - but the towers do not rotate <sigh>   OTOH, the dipole was king on the 6W1 qso...
  
  It is fascinating to follow the change in the receive vertical arrival  angles during the night... Roughly 2/3 of the time both the vertical  antenna and the high dipole will copy/work the arriving signals, though  one or the other may be favored by an S-unit, or so...  At times  the dipole is the favored antenna and at other times the lower angle  vertical is better - when the vertical array is favored it can be  slight or as much as 3 to 6 S-units!  I have seen signals that  were S7-S9 on the vertical array that were in the noise on the  dipole... The old adage that you can never have too many antennas is  still valid...
  
  There are times on transmit when the vertical array and the dipole will  show roughly the same S reading on the signal, but one will make the  qso and the other won't... Of course, it can be pure chance that I  don't get the Q on one antenna and then do get it on the other... Other  times, I can tell that the DX station is not hearing one antenna at all  but responds to the other immediately... Yet, the receive signals are  roughly the same...   I still don't have a solid theory on  this, but I'm working on it... If only CQWW came more often...
  
  With the two element vertical array having a 10dB, or more, FB ratio  the need for a Beverage is definitely less... The high dipole always  has more receive noise than the two element array... I can often hear  better on the directional array even when using the dipole for  transmit...  A vertical antenna, a single or a 2 element array,  and a dipole or horizontal loop will give the space limited ham a  better chance at increasing the country count over using just one or  the other...
  
  cheers  ...  denny

		
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