[TowerTalk] Tower and antenna decisions

[Grant Saviers]

Just having returned from our mini-dxpedition to Raivavae (Australs, 
French Polynesia) as TX5D I can confirm how loud or "only station on the 
band" big high antennas sound.  e.g W6CCP was working Asia/Oceania  
*that I couldn't hear* and was S9+10 on a fairly quiet band.  Or the S 
meter bending W4? in Florida with a 4L 40m beam at 140'.

OTOH, there must have been some super stations calling us from Europe, 
but they didn't stand out from the pileup like these did. But the 
disproportionate number of EAs we worked showed how some paths are 
really favored.  We were using "verticals on the beach", 500w, and were 
reported as "loud" most everywhere.  A direct A-B test of verticals 
showed a 2 S unit advantage when within 1/2 wl vs 2 wl of the salt water 
lagoon, elevated radials.

Grant KZ1W

On 10/28/2013 12:16 PM, Richard (Rick) Karlquist wrote:
>
>> On 10/27/2013 2:26 AM, Jim Thomson wrote:
>
>>> Take one of these 89 ft crank ups....and run it from 26 ft 
>>> nested..up to
>>> 89 ft extended..and it’s a real eye opener.  I have a  slight uphill
>>> rise from N-S...all facing east.   And slightly downhill.... from
>>> N-S..all facing west.   I need all the height I can get when pointed
>>> at EU, AF, SA, etc.
>>
>> Right, but you said flat land. I have similar topography here to the
>
> I am lucky enough to have a 106 foot crankup, and BTW, I'm on flat land.
> At the time I acquired the crankup, the answer to "why 106 ft?" was 
> "because I could" rather than any particular "engineering" 
> justification.  Recently, I set up a 40 foot tower 100 feet away from
> the crankup with a SteppIR Yagi on top.  The crankup also has a 
> SteppIR Yagi.  This setup allows me to do direct A/B comparisons in 
> real time. With the tower cranked down to 40 ft, the two Yagi's 
> performed the same, after accounting for slightly higher gain on the 
> larger one.
> With the tower cranked up, the increase in signals on a calibrated S
> meter was often amazing, up to 10 or 15 dB, especially on long haul
> DX.  There were conditions like noon on 20 meters to the east coast
> where the 40 ft high Yagi was equal to the high one.  I haven't observed
> any cases where the 40 ft high Yagi was better, but I could believe that
> could happen occasionally.  These tests were done on 20 through 10
> meters.
>
> Like you say, a real eye opener.
>
> I purchased the tower from W6BH (recently a SK) who replaced it with ...
> an even higher tower, of course.
>
> Rick N6RK
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