I agree with Tom's comments. The only thing I would add is that, certainly
up here in North East Ontario where I am greatly affected by the auroral
oval, it takes a long time to determine whether a directive antenna is
working as it should. I have twelve 800' beverages at 30 degree intervals.
On the Friday night of the contest they were very directive, and DX signals
were clearly best on only one antenna. On the Saturday night what DX there
was (very little!) was heard more or less equally on ALL beverages, and was
actually received best on the main vertical, closely followed by a low
dipole. The 'normal' situation is somewhere in between, where the beverages
are always best, but there is little difference between about 3 of them for
any particular station.
73
Roger VE3ZI
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