Jim, a large iron deposit lies north and west of Chicago, so verticals work very well in many areas around Chicago. I live on the Texas Gulf Coast which is salt laden gumbo from an ancient sea and verticals work very well here. I don't know about Stephen's area of the UK, but I will easily accept his experience that verticals don't work well there. Willis 'Cookie' Cooke K5EWJ
________________________________ From: Jim Brown <j...@audiosystemsgroup.com> To: elecraft@mailman.qth.net Sent: Sun, January 2, 2011 3:42:12 PM Subject: Re: [Elecraft] [K3] KAT3 and 160 with 40m long doublet On 1/2/2011 12:03 PM, Stephen Prior wrote: > I don't have a good enough ground to feed the antenna as a Marconi so my > options other than lengthening the antenna are rather limited. Don't give up so easily. In Chicago, I used a big wrought iron fence plus a dozen or so 30 ft long wires as counterpoise for a Marconi; KK9H has used the HVAC ducts in his home. ANY counterpoise is better than NO counterpoise. In another installation, I've run as many fairly short wires as I could from the base of the antenna, connected them together, and to the coax shield. Was it as good as 70 quarter-wave radials? Of course not. Did the antenna work well enough for me to have a lot of fun? Yup! My Marconi was a 100 ft long center-fed dipole with loading coils to resonate it on 80M. Just for fun, I tried loading it as a dipole on 160. Performance was wretched. Using it as a Marconi gave me signal reports at least 10dB better. 73, Jim K9YC ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
