Hello Mike,

When I got it correct you ran a long (fence) wire as a monopole against
ground.
I believe that a dipole could have a very different behaviour. With a
monopole use the ground as counterweight so the 'return current' has to
come via the (lossy) ground, while for a dipole this is not the case.
But I would go for a much longer length than the 100m Andy suggests, best
would be a fullsize dipole if you have the space and about 1km of wire.
Suggestion : look out for an abandoned phone line.

73, Rik  ON7YD

At 14:00 18/01/01 -0000, G3XDV wrote:

I tried something like this in GW in the early days of 73khz but it was very poor. Rock may be a poor conductor but it still appears to absorb most of the RF. And it wasn't just that my antenna was horizontal as in fact it went up a steep hillside at some 30 degrees. I tried it again when trying to work MI0AYZ as a deperate attempt when my kite failed to fly - it was still poor. Worked fine on receive, though.

Depressing as it may be, Marconi got it right 100 years ago and we have failed to improve on his findings. There must be another magic antenna out there somewhere but that isn't it.