<If you had 20,000 acres of clear, level land available and a couple of
thousand dollars to spend from selling some old equipment, what type of 160
meter receiving antennas would you build?
73
Larry
N7DF>
Larry, you did not say if you were looking for a receiving antenna
for Dxing, contesting, or other. Your bio on QRZ.com says you are a
contester and antenna experimenter. One of the problems with too
directive RX antennas in contesting is missing stations not in front of
the antenna. Alternately however highly directive antennas are usually
the best Dxing antennas. I suggest that you really soul search before
you commit to a large design.
If you really meant that you are an antenna experimenter
then I would suggest you look into other alternatives to the oft mentioned
Beverage antenna. Jarda, OK1RD is absolutely right that a well made
wide spaced shortened vertical 8 element circle antenna is a real
contender if not a total winner when it comes to low noise receiving.
One other alternative is the approach that K7CA and N7JW have built
that gives you both transmit gain and low noise receiving.
My ultimate receiving antenna choice would be to build a Wullenwever
96 element direction finding antenna. I don't think it fits in your or my
budget as you stated it however.
All that being said, there is a lot of work going on in shortened vertical
arrays and my opinion is that they deserve a really good look. Personally,
I use both Beverages and several arrays of shortened verticals. It is my
opinion that the shortened vertical arrays generally outperform single
and sometimes dual Beverages except for high angle signals. Bottom
line, you can never have enough receiving antennas of different types.
One of the real treats in this game is to be able to listen to 2 large
1 or 2 wavelength spaced receiving antennas at one time using diversity.
I highly recommend you consider more than one type being that you
have the space.
Lee K7TJR OR
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UR RST IS ... ... ..9 QSB QSB - hw? BK
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