A friend of mine and I built two identical W5GI "mystery antennas", and have installed them as flat tops at 50-60 feet. These antennas are showing an SWR of <2:1 on 80, 40, and 20 meters. 17,15,12, and 10 need a tuner, but work quite well, too.
We are both getting great DX results with just 100 watt transmitters on SSB phone. Now that I have mine reasonably high, I can seemingly talk to just about anyone I can hear on 20 and 40, and it seems really good on 80, too.
What is most interesting to me is what results we get when the two of us try to talk locally (we are about 25 miles apart). Using the two W5GI wires, we get about S7 on 80 meters, about S4 on 40, and just barely copyable on 20 and 10. Virtually nothing on 17,15, and 12. But when we switch to our 10 meter verticals, we are around S4-5.
I guess what seems weird to me is how poor we are on 20, but that we are good on 10 vertical to vertical, but poor again on 10 with horizontal to horizontal. I would have guessed that 20 would be better with such a relative close proximity to each other.
Thoughts?
BTW, we can talk 2 meter FM simplex at about S3 with a little hiss, using a 3 element cubical quad to a 4 bay collinear stick, both at around 35 feet.
We are both getting great DX results with just 100 watt transmitters on SSB phone. Now that I have mine reasonably high, I can seemingly talk to just about anyone I can hear on 20 and 40, and it seems really good on 80, too.
What is most interesting to me is what results we get when the two of us try to talk locally (we are about 25 miles apart). Using the two W5GI wires, we get about S7 on 80 meters, about S4 on 40, and just barely copyable on 20 and 10. Virtually nothing on 17,15, and 12. But when we switch to our 10 meter verticals, we are around S4-5.
I guess what seems weird to me is how poor we are on 20, but that we are good on 10 vertical to vertical, but poor again on 10 with horizontal to horizontal. I would have guessed that 20 would be better with such a relative close proximity to each other.
Thoughts?
BTW, we can talk 2 meter FM simplex at about S3 with a little hiss, using a 3 element cubical quad to a 4 bay collinear stick, both at around 35 feet.
