Gain of a Dipole Versus Height from ground - RF Cafe Forums

RF Cafe Forums closed its virtual doors in late 2012 mainly due to other social media platforms dominating public commenting venues. RF Cafe Forums began sometime around August of 2003 and was quite well-attended for many years. By 2012, Facebook and Twitter were overwhelmingly dominating online personal interaction, and RF Cafe Forums activity dropped off precipitously. Regardless, there are still lots of great posts in the archive that ware worth looking at. Below are the old forum threads, including responses to the original posts. Here is the full original RF Cafe Forums on Archive.org

-- Amateur Radio

-- Anecdotes, Gripes, & Humor

-- Antennas

-- CAE, CAD, & Software

-- Circuits & Components

-- Employment & Interviews

-- Miscellany

-- Swap Shop

-- Systems

-- Test & Measurement

-- Webmaster
Steve
 Post subject: Gain of a Dipole Versus Height from ground
Posted: Thu Jun 23, 2005 3:24 am 
The gain of a dipole is (supposedly) well known at 2.15 dBi. However, this is only true for a dipole in free space and in practice most real world dipoles are going to be plcaed at a finite distance above ground. Unless I have a large carpet made from RF absorbent material (NO) then the only other option to ensure the dipole has the theoretical gain is to get it far enough from ground that it behaves as if it is in free space. The big question is how far does this need to be ? ANYONE CARE TO HAVE A STAB AT THIS ???

Posted  11/12/2012