Tirades:

Antennas:
I have to say this; there is more crap going around these days about antennas than any other subject. I just have to throw in $.02 worth here. If you can get metal connected to the rig, it will radiate. Period. I get so tired of hearing hams say "I can't transmit on the ends of the band, my SWR goes too high". And I am bone weary of reading the gain figures in antenna ads. So, here is my tirade...
SWR - is not the end of the universe, or the end of your signal. Let's do it this way; 100' of RG8-U foam coax, at for instance 14 mHz, gives a loss of 1dB. You have to have SWR of 5:1 to lose 1dB more; that's right - 100' of RG8-U foam, with an SWR load of 5:1 will lose you 2dB in signal. On the receiving end, 6dB = 1 S-unit. So you lose 1/3 of a S-unit; instead of S9, the other party receives you at S8.66 - What a shame. SWR is a minor thing in loss of signal. It only affects your radio because finals are an output device; an exit, not an entrance, and reflected power tries to force signal the wrong way. High SWR is not a sign that your signal is in the tank, and LOW SWR IS NOT A SIGN OF GOOD SIGNAL! I can design you a very impressive-looking 3-element yagi beam that will have absolutely flat 1:1 SWR, and actually LOSE power - you would be better off with a 1/4 wave ground plane. And I would remind you that there is a device that will give you perfectly flat 1:1 SWR, on any frequency from DC to microwave, and make your transmitter blissfully happy - it's a dummy load... And you are using an antenna tuner, right? A good tuner will load just about anything.
ANTENNA GAIN - Gain in an antenna comes from taking signal from one direction and directing it into another direction. Period. That's all there is to it. This can be done in a limited number of ways, but to different degrees. All gain-type antennas are a compromise between amount of gain and tunability; an antenna with peak gain has such a narrow tuning range that it is almost useless.
The thing that most frosts me is the claims made for gain by antenna manufacturers. Most of them are simply a crock... Even in my teenage CB days, the idea that a Moonraker had 23dB gain left me chuckling; 23 dB over what? A trash can lid buried six inches under ground? That's a 7560 times power gain. Did they really think that 'Ol Rachetjaw with his 100 watt kicker and his Moonraker had an effective radiated power of 756,000 WATTS? Please... The Voice of America has PhD engineers building curtain arrays the size of Rhode Island to get 20dB; hey, they could chunk all that and just throw up an old Moonraker. Somebody should tell 'em. Read the real books [Kraus, Jasic, Orr, etc.] and you will find the following to be true:
Just for grins, here is a chart [damn, I'm channeling Ross Perot] that shows the power necessary to obtain given S meter readings. This assumes equal conditions; i.e., the same station reducing power to play games with your head, and starts with the maximum legal amateur power [1500 watts]:
Your meter: Power required:
40 over - 1500 Watts
30 over - 150
20 over - 15
10 over - 1.5
S9 - .15
S8 - .0375
S7 - .009375
S6 - .0023
S5 - .0059
S4 - .00146
S3 - .000037
S2 - .000009
S1 - .000000572
It's true. No kidding.
My dipole blew down in a storm during the summer, and my present low-band antenna is:
a 16-foot aluminum extension ladder extended to 13 ft, and leaning against a tree in the back yard, resting on a wooden pallet and a rubber Welcome mat. The center-conductor side of a Budwig dipole connector is bonded to the bottom rung, the other side connected to four 66-foot radials of #14 insulated copper wire, spread out across the yard and around the corners of the house. On the rig end, there is an ancient old Heathkit HW-101 pushing about 90 watts key-down, through an MFJ 949C Versa-Tuner II, and 60 ft of RG-8/U foam coax. The tuner gives me 1.1:1 SWR on any frequency.
How is the ladder doing? At this writing, 41 states in every U.S. call area, 3 Canadian provinces, and 389 DX contacts in 48 countries and every continent. I'm not dominating any pileups, and I've had several "weak signal" reports, but I can work just about anything I can hear. Get the metal out there; it will radiate...