I've had low (30-40' up) 160m dipoles in essentially 3 QTH's.and always had
inverted L's to do A/B realtime comparisons.
. Here up on a good sized hill (660'ASL), rocky excuse for soil. (14+
yrs)
. At previous QTH, 30' ASL, wet swampy soil in most directions. (12+
yrs)
. At CY9AA, surrounded by salt water in 360* (< 2 weeks of operation)
In ~30 years of Topbanding, only *once*, at the swampy QTH did the low
dipole outperform my inverted L's on transmit.
There was one greyline opening to 9M6 that he was 539 or something on the
low dipole and inaudible on the inverted L.
Even on St. Paul's (N.) island-CY9AA (1997) completely surrounded by salt
water mere feet away from the antenna, it sucked really bad on 160m and the
balloon vertical kicked its butt 100% of the time.
At this ridgetop QTH where I've been extremely active the past 16+ yrs
contesting and DXing at no time did I see various 'low' dipoles ever
outperform inverted L's on 160m transmit. (every once in a blue because of
an arcing transformer or someone welding in the local area, the dipole might
be quieter on RX, but it's exceedingly rare)
I tend to view peoples claims about low dipoles with a huge grain of
salt.especially when they have no antenna to compare it to.
YMMV
CU (all of a sudden) (in the RAC Winter? in the Stew?)
Mike VE9Antenna Antenna
Mike, Coreen & Corey
Keswick Ridge, NB
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