Craig wrote: >I will respectfully disagree. You have made one major assumption >that is almost never true - namely that the BuddiPole vertical is >used without an adequate ground system. > >Most everyone I know (including me) who uses the BuddiPole as a >vertical uses a single quarter wave elevated radial or counterpoise wire.
I would not consider the grounding system that you describe as "adequate" for an HF vertical. >This costs less than $2 and weighs a couple of ounces. It offers VERY >efficient performance. The wire is cheap, just like a dipole, but how much was that vertical? I don't know your definition of "efficient performance." And if a length of wire (which must be altered for band changes) is going to be spun out at a site, why not just go with a much better performing, much cheaper half-wave dipole. A vertical with a radial wire incorporates almost all of the disadvantages of both a vertical and a dipole, at a much greater cost! >Indeed, for DX work, its lower radiation angle will vastly outperform >the horizontal doublets unless they are very high. Theoretically, yes, though not "vastly." But real world tests do not support that in the case of the poorly grounded vertical. I consider one radial to be a poor ground for an HF vertical. I base my outlook on more than 35 years of portable HF antenna trials at campsites in various parts of the USA. This is my *primary* interest in ham radio. I often erect at least two antenna types at a site for side-by-side comparisons. That is the *only* way one can determine how one antenna performs against another under otherwise identical site and band conditions. I have never used any vertical that performed, over *any* signal path, within three S-units of the dipole, except when my vertical was installed on the salt-water beach at Edisto Is. State Park in South Carolina. More typically, the vertical's performance deficit was closer to five S-units. On the other hand, I've worked 40 countries as far as Russia, South Africa, Australia, and Japan on 20 meters on a single weekend with a dipole that was on average less than six feet above ground. One can make contacts with even the poorest of antennas, and not realize how poor the performance is. Side-by-side tests out in the boonies is the real test of relative performance. Nothing beats that! 73 Mike / KK5F _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: [email protected] You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
