TO7CC DXpedition - worst ever 20m Reunion signal?

Some blokes have just landed in Reunion, to much fanfare and the usual over-excitement of childish men who want the DX.

Idyllic Reunion, a place where verticals excel.   Image: France Tourism.

Having managed comfortably to bag W1AW/KH6 with just a quarter wave vertical a couple of hours earlier (this being my very windy days antenna), this was no bad propagation day.

I should also point out that I've spoken to Reunion many times, always with a very easy copy despite normally using a simple delta loop or simpler, and have no need to sit for half an hour, waiting to be heard to bag the DX. 

So, why is TO7CC's 20m signal quite so poor?  They were certainly beaming Europe, to which they have a good aspect.  So it wasn't a heading or location issue.  I suspected they may have fallen for the trap of using a horizontal antenna from a seaside location.

I looked up their website, to find this is indeed what they've done for 20m.  Why, is something only they can tell us about.  If they had a quarter wave vertical, two elevated radials and stuck it near the water, it would beat the pants off the Spiderbeam horizontal yagi on DX paths.  Anyone who knows anything about seawater and vertical radiation will tell you that.

2E0EDX would tell you all about basic systems, verticals near the sea, and DX.

In fact, so far as their information lets you work out, they aren't actually at the beach at all, but operating from the grounds of a hotel.  No doubt it's much more convenient, but it's not making the most of the near-perfect ground lapping against the beach. Being 'somewhere near the sea' just isn't good enough; you have to place your antennas at the surf line - I usually place them in the surf - to get the benefit of the seawater.  By the time you're a few metres away from the sea, the effect is already rapidly diminishing.  By the time you're at a hotel, it's lost altogether.

It just seems a lot of people have real difficulty getting to grips with the distinction between absolute gain, and where that gain occurs in the vertical plane.  Either that, or they are suffering from the age-old need to use 'big' antennas.

If you don't believe me, run a model of a three element yagi at 10m (I doubt a DXpedition would get an antenna higher than this in most cases) against a quarter wave next to the sea (you can use 'perfect' ground conditions - it's near enough.)  What can you see?  Yes, the yagi sticks its radiation out somewhere in mid-air, whilst the little vertical, just a 7m tall fishing pole if elevated radials are in use, fills the gap at lower angles.

You can also get some proof from the extremely poor signal on 20m.  Operator, beware!