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Re: [TowerTalk] Circularly Polarized Receive Antenna

To: Steve Jones <n6sj@earthlink.net>, towertalk@contesting.com
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Circularly Polarized Receive Antenna
From: Brian Beezley <k6sti@att.net>
Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2025 10:28:40 -0700
List-post: <mailto:towertalk@contesting.com>
On 8/13/2025 9:37 AM, Steve Jones wrote:
Brian,
How about one vertical antenna on one RX and one horizontal antenna on a 2nd
RX, with the two signals combined in diversity mode?  My K3 can do that.
73,
Steve
N6SJ

Steve, your comments are right on. After I sent my message, I was thinking that maybe I should add something about using two antennas as an alternative. I'm not familiar with the K3, but I know that several current transceivers have two coherent receivers. You can either listen to two signals, one in each ear, or combine them to maximize S/N, either manually or automatically. The antennas don't have to be perfectly orthogonal. Their polarization sensitivity just needs to be somewhat different for automatic S/N maximization to work. You might even benefit from location diversity if the antennas are far enough apart. The distance needed may be a bit large on 160 though. What I like most about using two antennas is that you aren't stuck with a suboptimal axial ratio if you can't accurately determine your local ground constants. Adjusting the combination to maximize S/N implicitly accounts for whatever ground constants you happen to have. It also accounts for the incoming elevation angle. I would use an automatic algorithm if possible.

Incidentally, I mistakenly sent my message to TowerTalk. I meant to send it to TopBand. I later sent a copy there, but it hasn't shown up yet.

Brian

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