Colleagues,
Good afternoon. I thought I’d report back on this morning’s experiment of focusing my 17’ Whip vertical antenna (20m) towards the northeastern US. These are two different POTA activations with different antenna configurations.
The first map shows the contacts made 2 days ago from the day use area of SFA State Park using a 17’ Whip Vertical antenna and 6 radials. Power = 50W, Frequency = 14.0625 MHz, Transceiver = Yaesu FT-891, Coax = 15’ of RG 316, Mode = CW, Speed = 20wpm, Number of contacts = 44.
The second map shows the contacts made this morning from the same location, the day use area of SFA State Park. I used a 17’ Whip Vertical antenna and 6 radials PLUS a 18’ Reflector offset 10.5’ behind the radiating vertical, and a 16’ Director offset 10.5’ forward of the radiating vertical. Other parameters were the same as before, Power = 50W, Frequency = 14.0625 MHz, Transceiver = Yaesu FT-891, Coax = 15’ of RG 316, Mode = CW, Speed = 20wpm, Number of contacts = 44. Azimuth angle of Reflector, Radiator, & Director = 55 degrees.
In this picture of the array you can see the three vertical whips arranged in a row with 10.5’ spacing. Radials were put out for the Reflector and the driven element but not for the director, I haven’t made the radials for it yet.
<Screenshot 2026-10-22 at 5.18.02 PM.png>
The data for the two activations is the following (the yellow highlight shows the improvement of the vertical array):
<Screenshot 2026-10-22 at 5.18.42 PM.png>
<Screenshot 2026-10-22 at 5.19.20 PM.png>
And when you look closer at the New York and New England contacts the data show this (the yellow highlight is showing an even greater improvement):
<Screenshot 2026-10-22 at 5.20.28 PM.png>
<Screenshot 2026-10-22 at 5.20.53 PM.png>
This experiment is clearly not an A/B test; however, it would seem that the signal was focused towards the north eastern US as expected.
Hope that you find this interesting!
73,
Stephen (W2WF)
