Vertical vs. Dipole: Qualitative Notes
Vertical vs. Dipole: Qualitative Notes
Hamstick vertical performance compared visually to a hamstick dipole on 20 meters
20 meters was pretty muted this afternoon. While operating in FT8 mode today, I took off the 20-meter hamstick dipole and tried a 20-meter hamstick vertical on the 25-foot-tall telescoping mast.
Visually, you can see that the signals in the waterfall when using the vertical hamstick were less strong than when using the hamstick dipole. These two screenshots were taken within five minutes of each other.
Waterfall with the vertical hamstick:
Waterfall with the hamstick dipole:
No settings were changed on the radio or in the WSJT-X software for this simple comparison.
A few hours later, the waterfall started to show a lot more activity. This waterfall occurred at 6:22 pm Pacific, just a few hours before the grayline crossed over, and using the hamstick dipole:
Are there shattering revelations in this brief comparison of a vertical and a dipole? Heck no. The vertical worked, but the dipole gathered in more: more signals which were also stronger compared to the vertical.
Later, I started thinking about how to make a compact 2 (or 3) element beam with hamsticks. That should be doable, and somewhere, someone has undoubtedly already done it. But...if I'm going to do that, then why not echo the idea with a homebrewed beam with wire and loading coils? That would probably make for a compact beam that I could take to parks for POTA activations.