![]() I attended a seminar years ago on the use of radials for verticals where the speaker and his group had put up a number of four-square arrays for various bands. There are lots of plans available on the internet. For the price of some wire at the Home Depot you should be able to rig up a dipole that will get you on the air. Overall, I find that a horizontal antenna (dipole) is less noisy than a vertical. Similar to the vertical, it works very well on 20 through 10 Meters but is a little too low for good DX on 40 and 80 meters. On trap dipole covers 80, 40, and 15 Meters and the other covers 20 and 10 Meters. It's basically two trap dipoles fed with the same feed line. ![]() ![]() It will work without radials but not as good as with radials. I have mine mounted on a 18' piece of 2" iron pipe and use elevated radials, 4 per band. I have found that it works great on 40 to 10 Meters, but the bandwidth on 80 meters is very small and makes it difficult to tune up. DX Engineering still caries it, and it's variations. I have a 5BVT that I bought at a ham fest. Even then it would be very subjective.Ī good place to look at antennas would be DX Engineering - Free Shipping on Orders Over $99. About the best we might do is tell you what we have and how well it works. There is only the antenna that works best for you and your environment. There is no such think as the best vertical antenna. The Comet CHA250 is one of the worst antennas I've ever tried.Well, things haven't change in 40 years. Yes on 20m you can make some contacts but try 40 or especially 80m when conditions are not so good. People on dipoles will be heard just find and nobody will know you exist on the Comet. I would completely ignore any endorsement of a Comet CHA250 or any antenna for that matter unless the person endorsing it can compare it directly to another antenna at the same location. The problem is many people may have only used a Comet CHA250 and they have nothing to compare it to and it made a couple of long distance contacts, which could probably easily have been done with a mobile Hamsick, and they think the antenna is great. But its not, its a dog and a lame dog at that. Many vertical antennas simply suck on the lower bands like 40 and 80m and lack of ground radials contributes to this problem.ĭo yourself a favor and avoid it and anything that resembles it. If very short ground radials like 6ft long would work at your location I can vouch for the old Cushcraft R7000 and newer R7 and R8 series, they not too bad for the size but still lacking compared to a simple horizontal wire like a ZS6BKW or 40m OCFD. The only time a vertical will outperform a good horizontal wire antenna even on low angle DX is if it has a substantial ground radial system. ![]() That's just the way it works and if you don't have space for a lot of ground radials the performance is going to be way down. Out of all the multiband verticals I've tested without a huge ground radial system the Cushcraft series has been one of the few that I would ever endorse. All others I've tested from GAP to verticals with a 4:1 balun at the base and ranging in height from 25 to 43ft sold by everyone from DX Engineering, S9, Zero Five, MFJ and the likes completely suck when ground mounted without radials. Add a bunch of radials just 20ft long and now the antenna wakes up and will make 10X more contacts.
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