You know my previous post where I stated I’d be keeping my Waller Flag until I moved? Well, about that…
The other night I noticed I had lost all directivity on my “Waller Flag” receive antenna. I was unable to troubleshoot the cause, and I checked everything possible – transformers, termination resistors, feedline, ETC. I reconfigured the antenna as a standard flag receive antenna, 16ft high by 26ft long, terminated with a 920 ohm resistor and matched with a 9:1 transformer on the other side. I got my pattern back. This antenna has a fatter front lobe, more gain, better front to back, and seemingly better immunity to it’s surroundings (no interaction noticed). Signals seem to be close to the same strength on this antenna as the transmit vertical, but with less noise. The plot below shows the pattern as opposed to the Waller Flag (in yellow prior to the loss of directivity). You can see the narrower front lobe and better F/S the WF provides.
Deember 2020 update: Please don’t let this dissuade you from trying the WF. In my case, I had interaction issues with nearby power lines that I was not able to overcome. N4IS continued to develop the antenna, and DX Engineering sells a commercial version. JC determined that a horizontal WF, high in the air, outperformed the vertically polarized version lower to the ground, and K3LR has one at his Multi Multi station. The antenna does work!