40 phone was good to me tonight!

[bacpacker]

EB, do you think the vertical vs horizontal could be affecting comms at the distance? One of the guys that was in my emcomm group was big into hf and he complined all the time about verticals. I dont have any experience with them to speak of.

When my antenna goes in it will be running pretty much n-s. Not quite 180 degrees, but close. The way my property runs, one end is gonna be10-15' off the ground. Feed line will be around 35', the opposite end probably 20-30'.

[ElevenBravo]

EB, do you think the vertical vs horizontal could be affecting comms at the distance?

I think it very well could be a player.. I am self taught electronics & ham, so someone with more formal education in the field could probably give a more definitive answer.

For example: I used to have an Icom 706 Classic, which had 2m on it... not only that, but it had 2m SSB mode! I hooked it up to my vertical ground plane (144mhz of course...) and could not communicate with my buddy in Floyd county.. He was running a 2m dipole. When we got on the phone, he advised we needed to have the same polarization.. He could not hear me, and vice versa. The next day I made (and still have!) a 2m dipole out of some scrap copper pipe... I built it a little bigger than the formula called for, and using a VHF SWR meter, started trimming a little off the ends until the SWR went flat... I was resonant! That night, I talked to him 2m SSB clear as a bell!

As I said, verticals talk to dipoles and vice versa every day... HOW the opposing polarities do and dont play well is beyond my scope of understanding.

EB

PS
Some light reading here...
https://www.google.com/search?q=hori...x-a&channel=sb

I (heart) Google images:
https://www.google.com/search?q=hori...w=1440&bih=788