Still Listening Linear on NVIS? You propably like QSB?

Ah, NVIS. The mode where everything is close, everything is loud, and everything is... wrongly polarized.

But don't worry. Most hams still cling to their horizontal dipoles like it's 1978, convinced that “polarization doesn’t matter” because “the ionosphere scrambles everything anyway.” Which is adorable, really.

Because here's a fun fact: it doesn’t scramble everything. In fact, it does something wildly inconvenient — it polarizes things. In a predictable way. That repeats daily. Like the Sun. Or bad tuner purchases.

But no, let’s keep pretending that a wire 3 meters above cow dung is "ideal for NVIS." Let's ignore the 10–20 dB polarization loss and just ride that QSB like it’s a rodeo. Yeehaw.

You say, “I hear everyone just fine with my dipole.” Great. You also hear them 20 dB worse than you could. But congrats on that 5/9 report from the guy next door who’s using an amp the size of your microwave.

The truth? NVIS signals arrive with predictable polarization. But adjusting to match that would require effort, or worse — reconsidering old forum wisdom. And we can’t have that.

So go ahead. Keep listening linear. Ignore physics. Embrace the suck.

After all, if there’s one thing more satisfying than hearing weak signals clearly, it’s being consistently wrong with confidence.

 

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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.