A footnote to W8JI's posting about Charlie: Tom, you may already know that
Charlie put up a 100 foot tower a year or two before he died, and planted a
zillion radials under it. The difference was such that there was NEVER a
time that the dipole, at 35 feet, even came close to the vertical. So he
took it down. He also tried half slopers from the top of the tower, and an
inverted vee at the top, but none of these beat the vertical and it
eventually became his only antenna. The half slopers were actually the guy
wires, which just happened to be 135 feet down to the insulators. The
inverted vee was two of the guys fed one against the other.
The soil under the tower was Indiana loam, pretty good for farming but not
great for conductivity. With all the aluminum he had down there, I guess
the soil didn't matter except in the Fresnel zone.
Incidentally, most of his DXCC was completed when he left New Jersey. I
think he had about 95 confirmed when he came here. And it's a known fact
that dipoles work better in New Jersey than they do in Indiana. (So do
verticals, beams, or any other type antennas). He did finish the DXCC with
the low dipole, but when he got the vertical going his tally went much
higher, rather quickly.
Tom is dead right about persistence paying off. Charlie kept the band
going a lot of the time when there was nobody else there.
73
Larry, N9DX
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