[BC] Long wire antennas

[Richard Fry]

>...a true long wire is a single wire, end fed against ground, unbalanced, 
>non-resonant, and directional along the general direction of the wire. 
>Less than about 1 wavelength, is not a "long wire" at all, but just a 
>random end fed. If the wire is fairly long, but shorter than required to 
>radiate all of the energy in one trip down its length...
___________

But the total r-f energy applied is not radiated as a function of the 
length of an unterminated radiator, so that, if the radiator is long 
enough, all that r-f will be radiated.  Instead, energy will propagate down 
the horizontal section of an end-fed long wire, and just as with a monopole 
it will be reflected back to the source while setting up E/I nulls and 
loops along the wire.  An end-fed long wire is a "standing wave" antenna, 
not a "traveling wave" antenna.

The link below leads to NEC plots of the total radiation patterns of a 
long-wire comprised of a 50 meter vertical section end-feeding a 1200 meter 
(4-wavelength) horizontal section on 1 MHz.

Note in the plots that the radiation pattern is omnidirectional in the 
horizontal plane.  It has many lobes in the vertical plane -- all of which, 
for these conditions, have more peak gain than in the horizontal plane (a 
taller vertical section tends to equalize them).

Also note in this model that the peak gain in the horizontal plane is >5 dB 
worse than that of a 1/4-wave monopole using a 2 ohm r-f ground.

http://rfry.org/Software%20Download/Long%20Wire%20Radiation%20Patterns.pdf

RF