Three element beam

[949Jake]

Years ago in Jackson, MS there was a guy who had a 3 element Mosley on a push up....no rotor. We always figured he went outside to turn it. One day we were passing by and saw him reach out the window with a pipe wrench and turn the pipe.

I have a buddy that had a Avanti Moonraker 4 on about 15 foot of tower with no rotor. Most of the time he just left it pointing west, because that was where most of the skip was coming in those days, but if for some reason he wanted to talk local or something he would climb up the tower and turn it with a pipe wrench. It was really cold then too...

The antenna worked fantastic though. On most occasions he was a lot louder than me. He ran about 15 watts ssb and I was running anywhere from 30-500 watts through a groundplane about 24 feet off the ground. I'm located on top of a hill and he is in a hole between two hills. He can barely talk any local, but when skip rolls in he's hard to beat.

 

[TonyV225]

Yupp I also agree with that and you also take into account the antenna for example a 5/8 wave antenna has a lower radiation pattern so it will bring that signal closer to the ground say verses a 1/4 1/2 wave such as the antron 99. I have heard people say they 5/8 is great but people with the 1/4 -1/2 wave antennas are contacting skip a little better due to the hight that the signal is launched into the inosphere. Its a huge world this antenna spectrom and technicalities is.

 

[Bionic Chicken]

I have noticed one thing about antenna height on 11 meters. The higher you go the harder it is to talk skip. At 150' I rarely caught any skip conditions closer than 1000 miles. I talked all over the world but it was hard to talk within the United States. Late at night talking (ground wave or whatever you want to call it) I could talk 150-200 miles barefooted. I used to talk to mobiles in Pensecola, FL early in the morning. After I dropped back to 100' that changed. I could talk plenty of skip but the barefooted talking dropped to at best 150 miles. It was a big difference.
The best conditions I have ever had was when I had my M107 on the ground (bottom elements 8' off the ground) setting the reflected power and a person called to me from West Germany on channel 20. I've got a QSL card to prove the contact.
So how high is good enough? At any given time it doesn't matter as far as I have seen.