40 Meter Antenna at 6 Feet Height
As we continue are review of portable HF antennas we start to approach the bizarre. This post reviews a full half-wave antenna for 40 meters placed just 6 feet high. This is almost silly, but, like I said before, is it a whole lot more than nothing and did work.
A quick observation reveals what is probably obvious – This antenna is the worst performer yet reviewed. at -.5dBi or so it works, but is seriously compromised by its proximity to the lossy earth.
Here is the view of the 6 foot high antenna with the current profile show as the curved line.
This antenna’s pattern is shown in black compared with our baseline 26 foot Inverted V. The low height makes this antenna about 3-4 dB worse than the baseline.
The above is the broadside pattern. As usual here is the pattern inline with the antenna.
Results? Height matters. Earth is lossy so keep your antenna away from it. In our pursuit of NVIS we can be too low or too high. It would seem we have discovered what is too low.
Next we will examine what happens if we put some parasitic wires beneath these horizontal dipoles.
