K5LAD - 50+ Years of Ham Radio Memories
Volume XLII
The Secret to Working DX is Antenna Placement
Many years ago, I remember reading an interesting article
in QST magazine, which originally looked like either a DX story or a description of a good
antenna or perhaps, both. The author’s
primary premise was that the location and placement of the antenna was the secret to
making great DX contacts. The author
described the antenna he used as being an unassuming,
resonant-length dipole made from simple AC zip cord like you use to wire up a lamp
in the living room. He told how he had
stripped the two wires apart, tied the center together to keep it from continuing to
separate, and had carefully hung it between two wooden posts, which were holding up the
roof of his house's back porch. He told how
that, even though the antenna was less than ten feet off the ground it worked amazingly
well and he owed it all to his choice of careful antenna placement.
To back up his standings he told how, by operating CW at a
very low power level, he had worked a tremendous amount of DX and to prove his point he
listed the calls of all the stations he had worked and it was obvious that they were from
QTHs all over the globe. His story continued
to develop and many readers began to sense a small drop of drool coming from the corners
of their collective mouths as they read more about this wonderful antenna. Wow, if he can do that, perhaps I can do the same. How many readers thought, “ I don't need all
those fancy towers and that collection of aluminum. The
secret is just how and where you place your antenna.”
But then, I got down to the end of the article and the
author reiterated the important concept that he want to get over and that was, the
placement of the antenna is the most important thing.
He then went on to say that this antenna was actually placed in Burma, or some
exotic country in that area, and he was signing ?????.
I don't recall the exact call he shared but it was a dandy and suddenly, the whole
story shifted to a different perspective. Truly,
antenna placement is the key and if it’s placed in an exotic geographic area, and
that seems to be the ‘key’ to the ‘key.’
I've always had a somewhat non-physics, non-scientific
ideas about antennas. In my 50 plus years of
hamming I've had some good antennas, some excellent antennas, and also some bad ones. I've used commercially available antennas and
build some homemade antennas that would make an antenna engineer shake his head. My antenna philosophy has always been, put up the
best antenna you can, as high as you can and then don't worry about it. If you've done the best you can, under current
circumstances, you can't do any better so just use it and enjoy it. It might even surprise you how well something
works. Perhaps a more popular, more
expensive, more carefully engineered antenna would perform better, but didn’t you do
the best you could with what funds, real estate, time, and experience you had? OK, then use………… enjoy what
you have and don’t be envious of what others have that you don’t have. Use and enjoy what you have.
Recently I got my own antenna results surprise. Whereas my primary ham equipment is located in my detached garage I do have a simple rig inside my house conveniently located beside my Lazy-Boy recliner. It's sort of like a "Studio B" area. The rig I use in Studio B is a Yaesu FT-817. It covers 160 meters through 70cm but maximum output power on any frequency is 5 watts. I used the bias T antenna switch that was featured in a previous article, <http://www.hayseed.net/~jpk5lad/K5LAD%20Memories/Vols%2031-35/Memories--Vol33.htm> to choose one of 4 antennas located just outside the house. Any antennas connected to this switch are not part of the collection of antennas available in "Studio A." The primary antenna I use for "Studio B" is a Hustler 4BTV which is popular and available in lots of ham backyards.
When I owned the ham store back in the 70's, the 4BTV was a popular
antenna for beginners and veteran hams alike. It
was multiband, relatively inexpensive, and took up not much real estate on the ham's
property. The instructions suggested that the
user install multiple ground radials as a counterpoise to provide "the other
half" of the antenna. As the vertical
was a quarter-wave on a particular band and a half-wave antenna more closely represents a
good match for 50-ohm coax, a good counterpoise is a good idea. Some people used a ground rod pounded into the
ground right beside the vertical's feedpoint and hoped the antenna would recognize a good
reflection of the antenna in the ground. Unless
the vertical was mounted in a salt marsh, the ground rod was not much of an effective
counterpoise. This often led to the feeling
that a vertical is a poor antenna. Still,
going back to my original antenna philosophy, if that's the best you can do then "ya
cain't do no better" and you just use it as many did.
I used an LDG Z-11 automatic antenna tuner to provide the final match between the transceiver and the vertical with its chain-link counterpoise. This doesn't really scream to its ability to communicate on the amateur bands but it does perform quite admirably. All of my operation inside the house is on SSB. Put together all the ingredients of this station and you might wonder if any communications is possible at all, i.e., vertical antenna, strange counterpoise, and only 5 watts output.
Several weeks ago, during the evening when TV was made up
of all reruns that had not been worth watching on their original showing, I was listening
to 20 meters. I heard E77XZ in
Bosnia-Herzegovina (Europe) as he was working US stations.
He had quite a pileup going and my first thoughts were, "there's no way I can
make it though that pileup and then get him to hear my poor little 5 watt peanut-whistle,
especially with just a vertical." I called him
a couple of times when he stood by for another contact and on about the 3rd or 4th
attempt, he came back to me. I've got some
other nice equipment including a tall tower, a nice SteppIR yagi beam, and plenty of legal
RF power but I wasn't on that equipment; I was on the 'minimumest' of the minimum and I
worked him. I even got a 57 report from him.
lf this story has a point, it would be, "don't fail to
try to operate or hold back,
Again, put up the best antenna you can with the money and
land you have available. Get it as high as
possible and then use it…………… enjoy it…….. really wring
it out………….. work the world………….. they’re out
there just waiting for you.
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