The difference is being under one wave length & being just above one wave length so it could be a Big difference.
lol, 6 feet but on the water. I have my beams up pretty high but being on the ocean I dont think it matters, the dipoles and verticals all work fine at 20 feet. I plan on putting my old 3 element beam on a ten foot pole and see what happens, I am betting it does fine for DX . 73'sThe little bit of reading and studying I have done seems to indicate that it’s also highly dependent on the type of ground under the antenna.
Salt plains vs rocky mountain side...in other words.
I don’t have much to worry about...my feed point is at 6 feet, and I can’t afford bigger tires or a lift kit.
I wish I operated over the ocean...
Hey homer,
I operated MARS from USS Dwight D Eisenhower aircraft carrier.
I made friends with the radiomen in the comm center.
I had 5 acres of steel flight deck for a ground plane, floating in the middle of a salt water puddle somewhere on other side of the world.
Sateside MARS operators were giving 30 to 40 over S9 RS reports.
I don't know how much output power we were running but the RM guys said we were heating up the comm center.
I operated /MM on Kitty Hawk (CVA-63). The ham/MARS station was under the forward end of the angled deck; the port-most compartment on the ship. Right outside there was a catwalk that once served as access to a couple of verticals. The low-wings on the F-4s made relocating those antennas a hot priority. Antennas left....but the bases remained. A chunk of RG-8 ran from the shack out into the weather and to the best-located antenna base. From there we hung "about" 16 feet of stainless steel cable with about 20 pounds of scrap on the end to keep things fairly vertical (that SS cable used as aircraft tiedowns is NOT fun to work with).Hey homer,
I operated MARS from USS Dwight D Eisenhower aircraft carrier.
I made friends with the radiomen in the comm center.
I had 5 acres of steel flight deck for a ground plane, floating in the middle of a salt water puddle somewhere on other side of the world.
Sateside MARS operators were giving 30 to 40 over S9 RS reports.
I don't know how much output power we were running but the RM guys said we were heating up the comm center.
I operated /MM on Kitty Hawk (CVA-63). The ham/MARS station was under the forward end of the angled deck; the port-most compartment on the ship. Right outside there was a catwalk that once served as access to a couple of verticals. The low-wings on the F-4s made relocating those antennas a hot priority. Antennas left....but the bases remained. A chunk of RG-8 ran from the shack out into the weather and to the best-located antenna base. From there we hung "about" 16 feet of stainless steel cable with about 20 pounds of scrap on the end to keep things fairly vertical (that SS cable used as aircraft tiedowns is NOT fun to work with).
But we could work anything we could hear. When we joined 7th fleet we had to QRT until we headed back to stateside.
Oh - that 16 feet of cable was actually a top-fed vertical, hanging down from the center of that antenna base. Worked just fine.