On 8/27/2020 1:42 PM, Lyn Norstad wrote:
While I appreciate the common opinion that 160m 'means' vertical, the fact that
I worked all states on 160 over a weekend, without breaking a sweat, leads me
to believe that I would benefit little by going that route.
A study of the ARRL Handbook and Antenna Book is worthwhile. Likewise,
ON4UN's "Low Band DXing," also publishe by ARRL. Also, N6BT's "Array of
Light," which includes his experiment of working all continents loading
a light bulb, proving that everything "works," but that some things work
far better than others.
My approach to ham radio has never been mediocrity, but rather to get
better at everything within the limits of my real estate and resources.
I did very different things from my childhood home in WV to a dorm room
at U of Cincy to two different Chicago city lots to a lot of property in
NorCal. I have a 1960 QSL from K4BVD for a QSO on a long wire from that
dorm room; Rusty later settled near San Francisco, now near Seattle.
He's W6OAT.
Verticals DO rule on 160M, simply because any horizontal antenna that
can be rigged for that band is a very low dipole (in terms of electrical
height), and therefore very LOSSY (meaning that most of the TX power
heats the soil). To deny that is to deny the fundamental laws of
physics. But if we cannot rig a vertical, we do what we can and call CQ.
In Chicago, my best antenna for both 80 and 160 was a 40M dipole with
loading coils to resonate it on 80M. Initially I fed it with coax, but
changed to vintage Belden KW twinlead that I had found "new old stock"
at the Milwaukee hamfest 20 years earlier. For 80 and 160, it worked far
better with both sides of the feedline tied together and fed against a
big wrought-iron fence that ran around the front of our yard. The
feedline did the radiating, the horizontal dipole wires served as
top-loading to increase efficiency. That top-loaded vertical was not a
good antenna above 80M.
There are photos in this set of slides. The shack was on the second
floor, and the vertical wires running from three down to the fence were
part of the antenna. The photos show that the antenna was sloped more
than vertical. :)
http://k9yc.com/LimitedSpaceAntennasPPT.pdf
73, Jim K9YC
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