Your two EXTREMELY short whips configured as a horizontal dipole will have very high losses and low efficiency? because they are physically short. Even though the whips load the elements to achieve resonance their efficiency is going to be horrible. This is the price you pay for "convenient" short antennas at low frequencies. Remember SWR has nothing to do with how well an antenna can radiate or receive an RF signal. A 50 ohm resistor will give you a 1:1 SWR but it will be useless as an antenna.
I generated a very quick & dirty model of your antenna and for NVIS signals arriving from straight overhead the difference between a full-sized dipole and your two short whips at 12' is on the order of >20 dB. This is a huge difference so when you say it works like rubbish it is in fact working as it should.
Gedas, W8BYA EN70
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On 3/10/2020 8:54 AM, nanovnauser@... wrote:
hi all i have a 80m dipole set for 3.775 Mhz,it seems to work rubbish,ive just done some adjustments,,take a look at the pics of it on the vna,does it look ok,views welcome,cheers m3vuv.ps,forgot to say its 2 80m mobile whips in a dipole config,up at about 12 feet for nvis .
