Oh that's something else I forgot to mention . . .
A couple of years ago I built a 160m Receiving Loop, which is Vertically polarised. It behaves very differently to my Dipole, I can see huge differences on European signals, depending on how far away they are, and the Propagation at the time. However . . . on DX there is usually no difference between the two antennas (although the QSB is often "out of phase") . . . which again makes me think DX Signals are arriving at a Medium Angle, rather than a High or Low angle. (If they were Low angle they would definitely be stronger on the Loop). And again, this is NOT at Grey Line times . . . it's pretty much all the time, both on TX and Rx. Years ago, when conditions were always much better, I used spend dozens of hours on SSB getting comparison reports from stations right across America with my good friend Mike G3SED. We lived quite close to each other at the time, he had a 100 ft vertical (with 60 radials), I had a Half Wave Dipole. When we were running the same power, most of the time our reports were the same ! These days I have set up RBN to show ALL G stations CW reports from any American station . . . and again I notice that my signals are generally on a par with all the Gs running verticals. Roger G3YRO _________________ Searchable Archives: http://www.contesting.com/_topband - Topband Reflector
