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grant with an amp

I agree but having the antenna AND say 150 clean watts PEP on SSB would be the shizzle. Heck if you mount the antenna too high up and add channels to the Grant xl that's illegal too. Might as well be illegal 3x and get the amp too.

I talk skip all the time with my barefoot radios with no mods....moonraker 4 @ 60ft.....I do not keep a log but have talked to Redbone in Georgia....Superman in Georgia....Snowball in TN....Jack o hearts in TX.......and many more....with a beam and mother nature you can talk skip barefoot.....I do run my radios into my rack gear with a studio mic....so I do have mega audio. :D
 
I talk skip all the time with my barefoot radios with no mods....moonraker 4 @ 60ft.....I do not keep a log but have talked to Redbone in Georgia....Superman in Georgia....Snowball in TN....Jack o hearts in TX.......and many more....with a beam and mother nature you can talk skip barefoot.....I do run my radios into my rack gear with a studio mic....so I do have mega audio. :D

a beam and 60 ft of tower is by no means necessary to talk skip . i talked from virginia to alaska barefooted with a home made starduster made of speaker wire and pvc at a 17 ft feedpoint height and folks have talked farther with similar 1/4 wave/dipole antennas . i do believe i would have had a much stronger contact with a set of beams 60 ft high , but without conditions no contact would have been made to start with .

a beam is typically a more effective and more versatile antenna than a omni but a omni is much simpler to install and most folks find it does "good enough" for their purposes .

just my POV (y)
 
a beam and 60 ft of tower is by no means necessary to talk skip . i talked from virginia to alaska barefooted with a home made starduster made of speaker wire and pvc at a 17 ft feedpoint height and folks have talked farther with similar 1/4 wave/dipole antennas . i do believe i would have had a much stronger contact with a set of beams 60 ft high , but without conditions no contact would have been made to start with .

a beam is typically a more effective and more versatile antenna than a omni but a omni is much simpler to install and most folks find it does "good enough" for their purposes .

just my POV (y)

I have both...a hy-gain SP500 and a moonraker 4 with larger wire on the back-door....and I can tell you from everyday experience that the beam is far superior...my ground plan is used for local talking.....when mother nature is doing her thing the maco kw switchbox gets flipped to horizontal.....most anything I can hear I can talk back too....its amazing how accurate it is.....where you point it...that is where you are talking.....I can be talking to a guy south of me and he can have my meter in the cherry patch...and I can start turning my beam to the east and watch his strong signal start dropping until he is completely gone and other stations start coming in....and you can fine tune them until you got them pin pointed and their signal is the strongest.
Ground planes will do the job...I used 1 for yrs......but they are not on the level of a beam...my buddy 357 snake doctor....gets down on the super bowl using 200 watts....they all think he is using a 10kw amp.....he just has a home brewed monster beam. :D
 
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