I agree Henry. Personally I like my A99 better than my Imax.
Henry, I'm not sure how we got off into this topic, but I may have misspoken when I posted about impedance vs. increasing height---decreasing impedance. I was referring to impedance very broadly in that context. If you want to try and duplicate my results that's great, that doesn't happen too often that I know about. I may need to be more specific about how I defined impedance relative to my answer “decreasing.” My tests were a long time ago and I haven't checked my notes yet, but I was likely just recording SWR readings back then. Let me know what you find and maybe we can make a new thread to discuss this, concerning new information I have using my analyzer. I don't want to Shanghai this thread any more than I already have.
Six of one, half a dozen of another.
Henry and Shockwave, this issue is one that dwells on my mind a lot when I'm thinking about antennas. I have a different take on the issue of what happens when we add radials. We don’t talk about what radials do or how they do what they do, we primarily discuss if we should slant them at some angle, make them horizontal, or if they will improve gain, stop TVI, or make a better angle of radiation for talking DX. We even talk about radials generically most of the time and tend to forget that different radiator lengths are affected differently by properly placed radials.
Every time we add a radial to the mix of a functioning GP the amount of current per radial is reduced and without thinking about it, that might sound like a bad idea, but it’s the only way to go if we want to mitigate the destructive effects of radials on the radiator’s natural pattern. The main reason for this idea is considering what happens when we are able to transmit with our antenna over sea water. We’re operating over a near infinite highly conductive ground plan and we don’t need radials that mess up the pattern plus we will see remarkable gain. I'm not implying we will see similar gains by adding elevated radials as if we were over sea water, but with my 1/4 wave Marconi testing with 0 - 6 radials, I have seen significant gains using a field strength meter to compare actual near field signals. I did some transmitting with each addition and I was also seeing some gains on-air. I'm still hoping to try and duplicate this effort, if I get to feeling better.
If I can find my notes, I will post that old hen scratching.
