What has been your experience with using a vertical or horizontal 1/2 wave dipole? Do you see the advantage of using one over the over. If horizontal, you can potentially go inverted V keep to keep your impedance closer to ~50 ohms. Horizontal as it is, basically ~73 ohms. The vertical dipole, I have seen several stacked setups but I am concerned it will change the pattern and unsure what the impedance would given the close proximity to the mast.
Well this really depends on what radio service we are discussing.
For HF work over skip this isn't going to make much difference for polarization at the receive end since it gets scrambled and twisted around after a few hops. For local HF, VHF.. and above, this will make a large difference, like that with CB 11m band radio where having an H-pol transmit antenna will get you a theoretical drop of 20dB over a V-pol antenna on receive at the other end, and vise versa. So for local comms it helps to maintain the polarization from end to end as the polarization differences can be extreme for loss above 45 degree angles or more.
(Inverted) V antennas tend to throw out mostly vertical polarization but the lobes are a bit stronger on the sides of the dipole. It is a good compromise between horizontal and vertical, better yet as you stated it does match better to the usual 50 ohm coax, but in my experience I never had the DX results I would get from either full on horizontal or vertical, albeit from the mixing of polarization causing some gain loss much like "one size fits all" circular polarized antennas on broadcast towers. One should also note how polarization of either antenna interacts with the ground too. Horizontal antennas will have much more interaction with height above the ground as it mirrors or absorbs just like vertical antennas will interact with metal buildings, trees, and so on.
Stacked dipoles, be it vertical or horizontal need to have some space from the tower. You will achieve a lower takeoff angle which of course increases gain because it's less of a cloud heater than a single dipole, however care has to be taken into account with the mast or towers interactions. Now this can actually be beneficial too with vertical polarization if the antennas are at a closer mount and tuned as the tower turns into somewhat of a reflector and can create a little directional gain I think.
In my experience the slight mismatch between aerials and coax impedance isn't that much of a loss. Running 50 ohm coax to a 75 ohm antenna (think dipole) is on the order of a 1.5:1 SWR mismatch average which is a loss of around 4% of power transfer on a bad day, or 96% of your radiated power still gets out. That translated to dB from theoretical perfection is a very small fraction of measurement and the receiving end of a transmission would never notice any practical difference or even a budge of difference on a calibrated S-meter.
You really only notice large power differences when talking about 6dB differences, which definitely can be had by wrong polarization from transmit to receive locations from natural terrain differences, or worse yet a 20dB difference between polarization extremes, but not so much the antenna mismatch feed point. Most other artifacts have far greater of a role.*
I typed this quite tiredly so hope someone will correct any mistakes here. I'll reread over my reply down the road if I blatantly made any mistakes. Thoughts? Don't worry so much. If it gets a signal out, it works
* I wanted to place a star where to continue something I think is important above..
Something that irritates me is my own early stupidity and the continuation of ignorance among others in CB and other two way radio fun. The idea that a feel good watt measured on a meter is going to make a difference. I used to think increasing a two way radio from 4 to 5 watts would make all the difference. Had a local golden screwdriver guy who somehow worked for a CB shop and actually got a paycheck once teach me because I was interested as a kid how to beef up my friends CB radios. Little did I know back then removing the RFI 50MHz trap slug inside and seeing that extra watt meant nothing as all it did was show higher power on my meter but it was reflected harmonic power and not legitimate output power, worse yet I was young and dumb and didn't realize how RF power in decibels works. It would have took that 4 watt radio getting to 16 watts carrier to even make a difference, not 4 to 5 watts. You live and learn. This is one of those cautious tales, sorry to derail your new thread. I'll separate replies if others chime in.
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