Antennas MUST be big and high->dispelling the myth!

[SLR_65]

Listened t this fella last night on 40 meters... look him up on QRZ to see his antenna setup. BIG pic! KB9FOP.

73,
Brett

Hi Brett,
When I look him up it says it's unmanaged and it lists him as Tech...do you have the call correct?

I had a little fun on 20 meter last night, made it to Virginia and California with actually decent signal levels! Also talking to a friend in SW Iowa on Echolink so we tried a few bands, got it done easily on 80 meters, barely on 40 and low but well on 20.

Today I'm wondering if low, but away from the house, would be beneficial...maybe a couple borrowed portable basketball hoops in the front yard and the loop hung from the side of the house to them so it's away from the house structure for 3/4 of it's length will help...I'll report back if we get to play.

Thanks!

Steve KA0NEB

 

[2RT307]

Sorry Steve. that should have been WB9FOP.

73,
Brett

 

[SLR_65]

Wow Brett! I don't feel so bad now! I got him beat for height! LOL!

"seems to work reasonably well, especially for DX"...hmmm, I'd say it exceeds expectations then!

There's no doubt, high and clear is best for an antenna, but sometimes it's just possible so you just gotta run some wire and see what you get.

I could hear Spain and Portugal last night on 20 but it was a huge pile up and I didn't toss my call out, guess I may want to just to see next time!

Take care, hope to catch you on HF sometime!

Steve KA0NEB

 

[2RT307]

Wow Brett! I don't feel so bad now! I got him beat for height! LOL!

"seems to work reasonably well, especially for DX"...hmmm, I'd say it exceeds expectations then!

There's no doubt, high and clear is best for an antenna, but sometimes it's just possible so you just gotta run some wire and see what you get.

I could hear Spain and Portugal last night on 20 but it was a huge pile up and I didn't toss my call out, guess I may want to just to see next time!

Take care, hope to catch you on HF sometime!

Steve KA0NEB

Yeah, he's pretty much the extreme, but just goes to show you it CAN be done. Admittedly it was on 40, but he was hitting me at 10 over 9 at 11 pm last night, and the band had gone long. Houston is about 260 miles from my QTH. I was impressed.

He was saying he gets good results with DX, too.

73,
Brett

 

[vkrules]

Try a 10 meter telescopic fishing pole from ebay.

 

[SLR_65]

I only see one 10 meter fishing pole available on fleaBay and it's coming from China. $80 and no specs on diameters or anything. DXEngineering has some telescoping al I might look at, I'm going to call about the Rohn H50 masts too. I'm thinking they'd be better than the fishing pole.

Thanks for thinking out of the box though, I wouldn't have thought of that long of a fishing pole!

 

[vkrules]

They are great for making portable or stealth antennas out of, you can just slide them up as required.

 

[Beetle]

Back in 1972, my family and I were living in a very small house. My antenna was a random wire for receiving; nothing for transmitting. I started hearing signals from EU on ten and thought "I gotta get something up. Even just a dipole, if I had a place to hang it."

Then I noticed the roof. There was a "valley" that looked to be wide enough, so I measured, cut, attached the coax and attached it to the shingles with THUMB TACKS!! Got the coax routed to the basement and connected to the DX-100B. First thing I heard was the first Austrian station I'd ever heard, and within about five minutes I'd had a 4-1/2 minute QSO with him. And a first Bulgarian, and a first Gibraltar, all CW.

Ten meter dipole, with no balun. Held up with a couple of thumb tacks at each end, with no end insulators! It worked! That's the fun of ham radio. Overthinking spoils the fun.

 

[2RT307]

Back in 1972, my family and I were living in a very small house. My antenna was a random wire for receiving; nothing for transmitting. I started hearing signals from EU on ten and thought "I gotta get something up. Even just a dipole, if I had a place to hang it."

Then I noticed the roof. There was a "valley" that looked to be wide enough, so I measured, cut, attached the coax and attached it to the shingles with THUMB TACKS!! Got the coax routed to the basement and connected to the DX-100B. First thing I heard was the first Austrian station I'd ever heard, and within about five minutes I'd had a 4-1/2 minute QSO with him. And a first Bulgarian, and a first Gibraltar, all CW.

Ten meter dipole, with no balun. Held up with a couple of thumb tacks at each end, with no end insulators! It worked! That's the fun of ham radio. Overthinking spoils the fun.

Hey Beetle, just looked you up on the Zed. Interesting stuff! Totaly off topic, but do you have any old pics from the USS Kitty Hawk?

73,
Brett

 

[RadioDaze]

I am sorry to hear about your eye disease I hope it is controllable with medicine /surgery etc. Best wishes on that front.

If you want an antenna to perform as good as it can then my understanding is that the physics suggest that it should be large and high. In direct contrast with the topic title.

Large as in 5/8 wave in length and as high as possible for best line of sight performance (above average terrain) and as high from the physical earth/soil (practically speaking) in order to lower radiation angle (and minimize ground losses) which improves the longer distance DX performance.

I don't know anyone who would want to aim for lower performance in any given situation. We must all of course accept practical compromise is use in the real world but it is good not to muddy the waters about best performance as we need a benchmark to aim for even though we might accept compromise.

 

[SLR_65]

Yesh, that's been covered in the thread...low isn't the best, and neither is short, but....everyone has the opinion that if you can't get long and high it's not worth doing and it's keeping many off of HF.
.
A dipole 10' off the ground allowed me to work several states and got a very weak signal to the Czech Republic within hours of being put up.

Some wire up is better than no wire up! Is the point. It's defiinitely worth doing!

Antennas are the best bang for the buck signal wise though, so always strive to do as good as you can with them, but again - many, many, many stations have ran non optimal setups in the past with success, maybe bot as much as they would've had with a big beam, but still enough to have fun, and that's the point -> get on the air and have fun! Don't let the antenna keep you off the air, put up as much as you can as high as you can, but if it's short and low proceed on, it'll still let you on the air.

 

[RatsoW8]

SLR_65..not sure if you already know about this site but here's a link if you don't. It could prove helpful.

http://www.hamradioandvision.com/

 

[SLR_65]

I did, but thank you anyway.

Their tips are spot on, also, Ham Radio Deluxe is uber configurable for fonts and contrast and makes things like PSK31 within reach for me.

 

[SLR_65]

Unfortunately with my vision impairment I'm not up to much fabrication, however....for those looking for space efficient antennas Google magnetic loop antennas. They have a very narrow bandwidth, but they do get out very well from ground level.
.
I wish I still had my vision, I think a magnetic loop and an Arduino micro contronller / stepper motor for positioning the tuning cap would be a very doable project and make the mag loop much more user friendly.