Quarter Wave -vs- 5/8ths Wave Vertical

q-wave-vs-5-8th-wave

Compare Red 5/8th -vs- Blue W/wave

Anyone who has mucked about with verticals will no doubt have worked out that a full-sized quarter-wave for the 40m band, more or less tunes up for 15m band.

It wasn’t until my entry in IOTA Contest this year that I convinced myself that they are not a cloudburner (as many people suggest) but compare favorably with a quarter-wave, even producing more gain by 2 dB at 10 degrees above the horizon.

OK, so 2 dB isn’t a huge gain, but hey – it’s free. Take it when you can!

Don’t forget, you can do the same for 10m band too by making an element 6.83m long and folding it back a further 1.11m (for 28.5 MHz). So you’ll need nearly 8m of wire. Don’t forget, that’s insulated wire!