When I lived in western Colorado for about a year and a half back in the
late seventies, I had an old 14 AVQ vertical that I put in my backyard with
about 750 feet of wire under it.  My house was above the town and on an
upper ridge.  Straight west was flat for hundreds of yards because I was on
the edge of town and over my fence was the country.  I had up a 40 foot
telescoping mast.  At 40 feet was my 80 meter inverted v broadside east and
west and about 5 feet below that was my 40 meter inverted v and it also was
nearly broadside east and west.  To the east of our house, for about 20
miles, was thin air before you got to the mountains.  Beautiful view, too,
if you could see, that is.  I was working a lot of DX in those days on 80
and 40 because in this new subdivision, we lived in, that is, all electrical
stuff was under ground.  It is the only place I ever lived with literally
zero line noise.  I could hear stuff on 80 and 40 I have never been able to
hear back here in Denver.

One evening, about 6 PM mountain time, I was working a friend of mine in
South Dakota, K0ZZ, who was also quite a DX er in his day on the low bands.
We had just finished a short 10 to 15 minute conversation on CW because we
were both hunting the band at sunset for DX.  Just as I stopped
transmitting, I heard a signal running about S8 calling CQ.  I had never
heard DX with my inverted v at sunset that was very strong, not until I got
a 2 element 40 meter beam once, so I didn't pay much attention to this
signal.  It sounded like an odd call sign so I called QRZ and punched in my
call.  The guy came back and called me.  It was VU2GW in India who I had
been hunting for over a period of months.  He was reportedly very active at
my sunrise and although I had heard west coast stations working him at that
time, I had never heard him.  I did this time.  As he called me, I switch my
coax switch to my vertical just for the fun of it.  His signal jumped up by
2 s units compared to my dipole.  I rarely saw that happen but low angle
radiation was perfect propagation that night for long path, apparently, and
as soon as I signed with him, he had a monster pile up on him.  I asked my
friend Gary, K0ZZ, a couple of nights later when I heard him on 75 meter
side band if he had heard the Vu2 station.  He said no because he was in
central time and had already been well beyond his sunset so it was kind of
cool how it all worked out.  My vertical in my backyard was a canon on 40
meters to any place in the Pacific and I worked Japanese during the mornings
with piles knee deep to an elephant anytime I was on the band.  My vertical
was about ten feet lower than a hill at the edge of my yard to the
northeast.  Plus my house was about 35 feet straight in front of the
vertical on the ground to the east.  I worked a lot of Europe on 40 CW back
then and got to know some common, on the band, European stations so I was
able to run antenna checks.  The vertical was always 2 S units under my
inverted v for that band.  I should have mounted it on the roof and maybe
have solved my problem.  I know a lot of people call verticals dummy loads
and airless antennas and the like but I have had very good luck with all the
verticals I ever ran.  With power, a KW that is, I got more TVI and radio
interference complaints of course but that's the name of the game with a
vertical and, yes, the noise is worse in most areas as far as man made
noises are concerned.  I think I mentioned once that I used this same 14 AVQ
on the ground here in Denver running 2 watts of CW with an old HW7 and in 18
months, I worked over 600 stations, 14 countries and all 50 states.  I also
worked both Alaska and Hawaii on 40 meters.  This was in the mid seventies
when the bands weren't all that good either.  So, I still am a believer in
verticals.  By the way, I only had a ground system made up of four 8 foot
long ground rods pounded in around the base of the vertical in a square
formation and a center post about two feet long that the vertical was
mounted on.  I had no room for radials in the tiny yard.  A chain link fence
was on top of a three foot concrete retaining wall and was only about 2.5 to
3 feet from the vertical and it still worked wonders with that 2 watts.

Phil.

K0NX
The Zenith Tube
www.RedWhiteAndBlue.org