20 meter quarter-wave vertical antenna experiment
Not content with attempting to understand and build 40 and 80 meter verticals, I’ve decided to build a 20 meter version tonight. This has 4 x sloping radials at 45 degrees with a feedpojnt up at about 7 meters in the air. On receive, it’s actually pretty good; only for extremely weak or barely readable signals is it beaten by the 40m loop or my attic mounted half-sized G5RV. For the record, it performed straight out the box with dimensions of a whisker under 5 meters for both radiator and radials.
No photographs today because it’s now dark and in any case, it almost looks the same as the 40m and 80m other than the fact the feepoint is higher!
Temporary conclusion: The noise factor may be a slight problem I think, although I’m currently listening to a net between two Italian stations and a couple of US based ones and it appears a good all-rounder, just a little bit more noise than the loop. I know verticals are noisy but I was hopefull of some quieter receive. I’ll try out some TX tomorrow.
