Wednesday, Mar 31, 2010 at 16:37
Hi Peter
I can understand how it might seem that way but it isn't as their is a fundamental difference and that is noise characteristics, these don't come into power transfer equations.
If an antenna is poor and transmits at 50% then the received signal is always 50%.
When receiving HF at the limit of communications the signal you hear is made up of two , not one component.
Its made up of signal + noise (manmade & atmospheric).
if your 50% effective antenna now reduces the received signal 50%
then both the noise and signal are reduced 50% but the ratio of the two remains the same.
Hence the ability to hear the signal remains essentially the same.
The above holds for HF but not for some other bands where the noise limitation comes from other sources e.g. device front end noise figure.
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