ON6URE PoTaSupreme™ eats POTA Performer for breakfast

The so-called "POTA Performer" has been making the rounds lately, often presented as a high-performance portable antenna for field operations. According to some, it's just short of a miracle: a quarter-wave vertical with two elevated radials, offering "up to 4 dB of gain" in one direction. This kind of claim might impress the crowd, but let’s bring some RF reality into the discussion.

What's really in the box?

The POTA Performer is, at its core, nothing more than a ¼-wavelength vertical with two radial wires. These radials may be positioned in-line (180 degrees) or in an L-shape (90 degrees). Depending on height and orientation, this creates a modest imbalance that results in slight directional behavior.

Yes, you read that right: slight. We're talking about a minor front-to-back ratio due to the unbalanced current distribution. This is no Yagi. It’s just a vertically polarized antenna with an asymmetrical ground return.

Let's talk directivity and RDF

In antenna theory, directivity is the measure of how focused the radiation pattern is in a particular direction. For a vertical with four symmetrical ground radials, the radiation is omnidirectional — or in other words, RDF (receive directivity factor) hovers around 0 dB.

Take away two radials and place them asymmetrically, and you break the balance. This causes minor asymmetries in the current distribution and ground reflection, which may give you a couple of dB of front-to-back. But that’s not "gain" in the traditional sense. It's a redistribution of the same total radiated power.

To illustrate the absurdity: If a 2-radial system can offer 2 dB directivity, what if you go further?

Enter the ON6URE PoTaSupreme™

Why stop at two radials? Let’s make it even simpler. A single radial. That’s right. A classic ¼-wave vertical with just one radial. Think of it like a dipole lying on its side, but elevated.

This gives you a clearer direction of radiation, with current naturally flowing toward the lone radial, and a very noticeable pattern skew. No need for marketing fluff. Just basic physics. The current wants a return path. Give it only one, and it’ll follow it.

Result? More directionality than the POTA Performer, better control over where the energy goes, and no mystical 4 dB claims needed.

NEC doesn’t lie — but it’s misunderstood

Yes, you can simulate these systems in NEC. But NEC shows ideal conditions: perfect ground, no detuning, no real-world losses. Just because you see 3 dB gain in one direction on your screen doesn't mean your actual antenna in a muddy field with a tripod is doing the same.

Simulations help visualize current flow and estimate patterns. But unless you're validating with field strength measurements and a proper test setup, don’t treat them as gospel.

Conclusion

The POTA Performer is a reinvented wheel with a new sticker. It functions, yes. But it doesn’t deserve its mythical status. If you want true directionality and real-world impact, consider asymmetric designs with deliberate current routing — like the ON6URE PoTaSupreme™. Sometimes, less is more.

And you don’t need a NEC license to see it.

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Written by Joeri Van Dooren, ON6URE – RF, electronics and software engineer, complex platform and antenna designer. Founder of RF.Guru. An expert in active and passive antennas, high-power RF transformers, and custom RF solutions, he has also engineered telecom and broadcast hardware, including set-top boxes, transcoders, and E1/T1 switchboards. His expertise spans high-power RF, embedded systems, digital signal processing, and complex software platforms, driving innovation in both amateur and professional communications industries.