I've lived in suburban environments, so I know all about the noise.
I was also, for a variety of reasons, restricted to simpler antennas for
many years in such a place. The amount of noise in such an environment is
surprisingly variable. Some guys live in a place that is like BPL was
deployed next door. Others are OK enough to get the job done. I was the
latter.
At least at my current QTH, the Windom is doing at least as well as my G5RV
of yore. I use the Windom a lot less, now, because of my tower, but it is
still there for the times that I need it. How would it have performed on
my former city lot? Don't know; didn't do that experiment. But, I suspect
it would have been OK. A Windom (at least the one I cited) is nothing more
than a dipole with a slightly different feed point.
Are you going to contend that dipoles don't work in city circumstances as
well?
Or, are you judging from the popular Carolina Windom, which isn't real a
Windom at all? I deliberately didn't deploy one of those. I have no
opinion on it except that I couldn't find an adequate explanation of how it
worked, so I stayed away from it. But if you're judging from that, then
the perspective _might_ have to do with all of the factors in it that
aren't really the Windom antenna.
Larry Wo0Z
On Wed, Jun 5, 2013 at 11:49 AM, Jim Brown <jim@audiosystemsgroup.com>wrote:
> On 6/4/2013 2:28 PM, Larry Loen wrote:
>
>> As long as we're talking OCF antennas, I've always found this an
>> interesting source as far as explaining them:
>>
>> http://www.w8ji.com/windom_**off_center_fed.htm<http://www.w8ji.com/windom_off_center_fed.htm>
>>
>
> Yes. It should be noted that W8JI lives in the middle of nowhere, miles
> from neighbors. I'm out in the country, but my nearest neighbors are about
> 500 ft away, and I hear their noise.
>
> If noise and/or RFI are not issues for you, including your ham gear, a
> Windom might be a reasonable option. That's not the real world that most
> of us inhabit. The average home today has dozens of switching power
> supplies and more than a dozen pieces of equipment with microprocessors.
> All of this stuff is a potential source of RF noise. If you doubt this,
> run your ham rig on a battery, kill power to your own home, and notice what
> noise goes away. If you're lucky, your own noise won't be overpowered by
> what's coming from your neighbors.
>
> The whole point of this is that if you can't hear them, you can't work
> them. In the past two hours, I worked two new band-counties who were only
> about S3. If my noise level was any higher I wouldn't have heard them.
>
> No one is saying that any given antenna "won't work," we're simply
> pointing out that some are better than others, and that every antenna has
> its advantages and limitations. Almost all wire antennas cost about the
> same to build (a couple of end insulators, a feed point insulator, some
> wire, some rope, and maybe one or two pulleys), so it makes sense to put up
> the best one(s) that you can based on your real estate and availability of
> sky hooks.
>
> 73, Jim K9YC
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