Great performance of my new 80m antenna on 17m band!

Great performance of my new 80m antenna on 17m band! Pick up at TI7W, Costa Rica (16755.8 km), in Central America, on the other side of the globe with signal to noise ratio of 11 dB. That is really fantastic for an antenna with major part less than 3m from ground. It is quite zig-zag in both horizontal and vertical plane. A very highly compromised antenna with unexpected performance on 17m band!

That is 5th harmonic (odd harmonic) resonance for a center fed half-wave dipole antenna. Third harmonic of 30m had SWR above 5, not tunable. 7th harmonic 12m was tunable. Even 6m was tunable with auto-tuner on FT-710. Never expected 5th harmonic 17m band to perform so well with 80m antenna.

They say that low antennas are ‘cloud warmers’, sending signals straight up and useful only for Near Vertical Incidence Skywave propagation over short distances. Maybe it depends on time of the day as well. This was clearly a case of grey line propagation to Central America. Grey line is a transition line coinciding with twilight zone where a change in the propagation of radio waves is observed. I used to work United States on CW during grey line decades back.