AmateurRadio.com

This is the final installment on my analysis of the RAC Survey 2021 on Canadian amateur operators. The previous article examined RF power reported by this national sample of ham operators. The other shoe on power use is the prospect of gain residing in the antenna used for transmitting. I begin with the HF through six-meter results for the basic antenna type used by Canadian hams. Figure 1 contains these results.

Just shy of two-thirds (62%) report a single-element antenna. The common dipole is an example of such an antenna. This is not a surprising result per se. The dipole antenna is often the first antenna described in license examination material. It is also the most frequent first-time build antenna for most new ham licensees. These results illustrate how the single element antenna serves the HF and six-meter frequencies well even today.

Multi-element arrays, most always having both gain and direction, are used by almost one-third (31%). For this frequency region, most are of the Yagi-Uda type, although there are wire beams as well as phased verticals, too. In results not shown, I examined whether multi-element array antennas on these bands are related to DXing or Contesting activities. They are in both. DXers and contest operators about about twice as likely to report typical use of multiple-element arrays than those who do not participate in these activities.

The magnetic loop is reported in use on HF by about 8 percent in this survey. This antenna design for the HF and six-meter bands is available for homebrew construction with many plans available. But it is also readily available from several commercial manufacturers. Putting a number on the share of hams reporting they use it for transmitting and receiving on HF tells us something about this type of design, which is known to have a high Q coefficient as well as lower noise than the single wire antenna. I examined the results by province, age group, and whether DXers or contest ops were more or less likely to use magnetic loops but do not present the results here. There were no appreciable differences regarding magnetic loop use in those groups of respondents.

Turning now to antennas used in the VHF and UHF bands, Figure 2 shows that the vertical antenna is almost ubiquitous. Three-fourths (77%) use a vertical antenna on these bands. About one-fifth (19%) use a multi-element array, with either a horizontal or vertical polarization. This is likely a Yagi beam design but others are possible. Only a handful say they use a single-element horizontal antenna on these bands.

It is reasonable to assume that most of the multi-element array designs are used for DXing or Contesting or both. As was the case with the HF bands, the use of multi-element arrays for the VHF and UHF bands were about twice as high (40% or so vs 20% or so) as for hams who say they do not do those activities.
Only a small fraction of hams operating in the VHF or UHF frequencies say they use a horizontal single-element antenna. It is likely that the mobile use of these bands may deter an alternative polarization if the operator is at a fixed location.

Heading now to the microwave bands, we noted in a previous article on this blog a small group using higher power levels for transmission. But power in watts is not readily necessary on these bands due to the higher gain often realized in the antennas used. Figure 3 illustrates the distribution of antenna gain (dBi) reported by amateur operators. While a small portion use antennas with less than 5 dBi gain, the median figure is about 22 dBi. Some say they have very high gain of over 40 dBi which makes even small power in watts effectively “high power” on the bands.

These antennas are typically designed to be much physically smaller than those used on lower frequencies. This provides a potential for more accessible use. However, the dangers of a very high effective power rating (power in watts plus antenna gain) can actually work against this flexibility. As manufacturers release more commercial equipment for these varying microwave frequency bands, it is likely that the numbers of amateur operators will dip their toes into the microwave bands. This survey only captures a small number of them because their relative share of the population is small.

This concludes this article series. The full report is available in PDF format at my FoxMikeHotel.com website here.