Ham Radio QSO Parties

This installment of our 40 meter antenna simulations takes our 26 foot Inverted V, described here, and levels the conductors.

The antenna exhibits some improvements over our baseline. Of course making a 40 meter antenna with level conductors is probably not very practical especially when operating Expedition portable. So consider this simply a “what-if” scenario to help us understand the variations.

Then again if you put up three masts, center and ends, you just might be able to swing this antenna.

Here is a view of the candidate antenna…

Here is a plot of signal strength (far field of course) vs. elevation looking broadside to the antenna with the blue trace being the pattern of our baseline antenna…

The gain is highest at zenith at over 6dBi… a full 3dB more than the same antenna in the baseline Inverted V configuration. This is only half an S-Unit, but in a competition an extra 3dB can help you in the pileups.

Let’s have a look at the elevation pattern along the wire axis…

Again we see a large improvement. For NVIS good energy down to 45 degrees is a desire. In this plot we see a 6dB reduction at 45 degrees from the maximum power. However, this is still a better signal than the baseline antenna.

This configuration provides more signal, but still is an antenna best used with your desired contacts broadside to the wire.