The CQ World Wide WPX Contest is this coming weekend! I’m not a contest station but I like to use contests to test out new configurations and antennas when there is plenty of band activity.

One of the limitations of my home location is the size and orientation of the plot. My permanent antenna is a Tilted Folded Dipole (T2FD). It’s a good compromise between size and bandwidth. I’ve made mine 20m in length so in theory it should just about cover the 40m band upwards with some efficiency however due to the size the only orientation I can fit it in means it’s most efficient in a North/South direction whereas from the UK an East-West orientation would be best for DX.

So for the WPX contest I thought I would see if I can make something that might work better for East/West communication. I’ve decided that I will operate on the 20M for a couple of hours on the Sunday so with that in mind I’ve thrown up a temporary Double Bazooka Dipole. This is oriented East West in an inverted V with a slight V towards the West in the horizontal plane. This should give it a little more gain in this direction although the primary reason for this is to fit it into the available space. You can see it here threaded through the T2FD.

This morning I ran a few WSPR cycles on each antenna for comparison:

The WSPR results seem fairly conclusive – the Double Bazooka is out-performing the T2FD on the 20m band. I think there are likely two factors at play here: Firstly the better orientation is enabling more long-range communications to the East/West where the majority of the land mass is from the UK. Secondly broadband antennas such as the T2FD tend to be a compromise across the entire bandwidth whereas the Double Bazooka Dipole is optimised for the 20m band I plan to operate in.