Here I compare the receiving ability of my 3 antennas on the air using a Japanese ham as the signal source. The antennas are connected to my Elecraft K3 via my Elecraft KAT-500 tuner/switch. The 3 antenna positions are:

1: Butternut HF-9V vertical ground-mounted over a field of 48 radials. It's about 20 feet from my house, in a relatively open, grassy area. This started out as an HF-6V that I upgraded to add 17, 12 and 6 meters.

2. My homebrew offset-fed 80-10 meter dipole antenna that is 135 feet long. The feed point uses a 4:1 balun, and is mounted on top of the tower supporting the hex beam on my roof--about 30 feet at the apex. The ends angle down to about 8-10 feet above the ground in an inverted-V arrangement. This is a very good multi-band design that is easy to make. One leg is 90 feet long, and the other is 45 feet long. Put the 4:1 balun at the feed point, and use an antenna tuner in the shack. I bought my balun from Balun Designs (DX Engineering has them also), and I used some very stealthy model number 534 26 Ga copper-coated steel wire from http://TheWireMan.com

3. My DX Engineering Hex Beam. It covers all bands from 20-10 meters. It sits on a 10-foot-tall Rohn tower on top of my roof. It is rotated by a Yaesu G-800.

The interesting part here is that the hex beam should only have about 4-5 dB gain advantage over a vertical, and a bit less than that over a dipole, and yet it appears to have an "effective" gain of something closer to 18 dB! And this is a typical situation for me, not an exception.

One of the reasons for this advantage is that the hex beam is located above everything around the general area, so it has a more clear "view" to the horizons. It is also quieter than either the dipole or especially the vertical. My vertical has to "look" through trees, my house, and other obstacles near the ground, and I think this shows that pretty clearly.

The hex beam turns a signal that the vertical can't really even hear into an S-9 signal that is easily heard and very workable. Score one for both the gain of the hex beam, and for mounting HF (and VHF too) antennas as high and in the clear as possible!

Please feel free to comment, offer opinions, or ask questions. I'm very open to those.

See a photo of all three antennas on my house in Provo, Utah, on my QRZ.com page here:

https://www.qrz.com/db/k7daa