Tim, let me tell you my experience. I use the old Cushcraft AOP-1 antennas. 10x2 elements on 2 meters, and 8x2 on 440.
I have them in an X pattern, and I can hear and transmit to the birds pretty much throughout the entire pass.
These antennas are old, and were designed during the days of AO-10 & AO-13. But I have restored them, and they still work great for me today (except for DO-64). It amazes me that I can drop my output to 5 watts and still hear myself loud and clear on AO-7 as it gets close to LOS.
I would concentrate most of all on good quality coax. I use LMR400, about 80 feet of it, with a TS-2000. I don't use a preamp and my antennas are up about 25 feet and I have a blast!
73 de W4AS Sebastian
On Sep 19, 2008, at 8:58 AM, Tim Tapio wrote:
Hi,
How much signal reduction is there as the result of having the wrong circular polarization? I'm looking at M2 circular antennas for the 70cm downlink, it's another $200 for the switching to change polarity (woo hoo).
73 de Tim, K4SHF