[TowerTalk] Vertical comparison question

[David Gilbert]

Several years ago I had an R5 on top of my flat roof house in 
Scottsdale.  It was horrible.  It was so bad that I opened up the box at 
the base to see what was in there, and after seeing the pathetic little 
tuning network I sold the thing to the first person who'd take it.

I replaced the R5 with a 17 foot tall single element vertical fed 
against a haywire collection of radials stretched as best I could across 
the roof.  It worked great.  Later I added a 35 foot vertical fed 
against the same random radial system (counterpoise is probably the 
better description).  The combination of the two verticals and a 
homebrew antenna tuner let me work well over 150 countries with 100m 
watts on all bands from 40m thru 10m in a couple of years of fairly 
casual DXing.

Put your money into a decent tuner and put up some tubing with whatever 
wires you can manage under it.  You'll be much happier.

73,
Dave   AB7E

p.s.  The tubing does not have to be self-supporting.  I used simple 
thin white nylon twine (like the stuff you can buy at Home Depot) as 
guys and it was still fine when I eventually took it down after ten 
years in the brutal Arizona sun.



On 4/5/2013 6:56 PM, John G. wrote:
> How do the "radialless" verticals, like the R5, R7000, MA5V, Gap ones, compare in performance to the standard 1/4 wave verticals that are roof mounted with radials?  Does one tend to outperform the other?  I am looking how each performs for DXing and longer haul communications.
>