[TowerTalk] Verticals on sloping ground

[Jim Brown]

On 1/14/2025 9:10 AM, Lawrence Stoskopf wrote:
> I'm not an antenna expert but been around reading for a long time.  We have good software for horizontal polarization antennas over sloping ground.  My SteppIR is at the edge of a 35 degree slope of about 400 ft drop right to EU.  I'll match any antenna!
> But the info I have on doing that with vertical polarization isn't really that helpful (to me).  And I don't play up on the isolated hill at night!!!

Dean Straw, N6BV, who edited the ARRL Handbook and Antenna Book at the 
time, wrote that software. Many of us out here in the western mountains 
use it extensively, and have found it's predictive accuracy to be quite 
good. I got to know Dean after moving here, and asked if he could do 
something similar for vertically polarized antennas. He replied that the 
math was more complex, that data was less easy to come by, and that 
since he'd been diagnosed with Parkinson's, he no longer felt able to do 
it.

73, Jim K9YC