Ham Radio QSO Parties

Some folks wish to try the six meter band for the Virginia QSO Party. This is great. Some questions were asked about how best to try this. Obviously a good beam would help, but short of that what can you try.

The answer turns out to be try loading up an HF antenna on 6M and see what you get. You might be surprised.

Here is an example of a 40 meter dipole up 20 feet…

Here is the 3D pattern with the same perspective as the antenna view…

The result shows long-wire type performance with good gain off the ends of the dipole rather than broadside. This fits in well with antenna theory. At first the reminds one of a collinear antenna, but this is not the case; For it to be collinear the current amplitudes along the wire, shown above, would have to be in phase. Instead they alternate in phase creating nulls broadside. Along the wire axis, however, the behavior creates strong lobes at low elevations.

This is an elevation plot 22 degrees off the end of the dipole in either direction…

In this case 12 degrees elevation shows the most signal. Here is the azimuth plot at 12 degrees elevation…

That peak signal has a computed antenna gain of over 9dBi. That’s pretty good for just a wire in the sky. The only disadvantage is you cannot steer the signal. This is a small price to pay for getting more use out of an otherwise single band antenna.

As you arrange your dipoles you might consider pointing their ends at parts of the country you think might have propagation at higher frequency bands.

So I guess the motto of amateur radio and antennas is….