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Hi Everyone!

I never could have predicted just how great the responses have been to this particular thread.  Thanks so much for all of the valuable insights on the topic.

I wanted to share an update with you all that is part of another thread I recently posted with some relevance to this thread.

Since my A99 is presently tuned to the 11-meter band, it's performance on 10-meter is somewhat compromised, especially in the 29 MHz portion of the band.  I also wanted to expand my antenna arsenal to include horizontal polarization.  So I built a parallel (fan) dipole using 14 AWG insulated copper speaker wire soldered directly onto the center conductor and braid of some nice RG6 quad-shield.  I also created a coax choke below the feedpoint to prevent the shield from radiating down the coax. 

Because of installation constraints, I mounted the dipole onto the top wooden mast section immediately below the feedpoint of my A99.  That puts the point of maximum radiation from the dipole up at ~28 feet.  I used the inverted V configuration.  I thought as an added bonus the inverted dipole sections would  further add to my current ground plane configuration already proven effective with my A99 vertical. 

Sure enough, the presence of the dipole had no negative de-tuning consequences for the A99.  If anything, it slightly lowered SWR towards the top of the band.  So, if anyone else wants to add a dipole or two to their current A99 installation, they can do so without consequence.  A couple of pics are included below.