POTA PERformer: An Award Is Not an RF Certificate

Once again, my inbox is filling with messages about the POTA PERformer. This time, the argument is not simply that it makes contacts: its ARRL/QST recognition is being offered as the answer to questions about its RF performance. Has an award turned a portable quarter-wave vertical into a reference against which other antennas should be judged?

No. That is the step I object to—not the award, not Greg Mihran sharing a design, and not operators enjoying it. A useful portable antenna can deserve recognition while still embodying a tradeoff. The award does not make that tradeoff disappear.

Give the QST Recognition Its Proper Credit

Greg Mihran, KJ6ER, received second place in the 80-through-10-metre category of the 2024 QST Antenna Design Competition. The June 2025 announcement, page 55, says the judges evaluated more than 300 pages of submitted material and generated models of their own. It identifies ARRL Lab staff and QST Technical Editors as the judges. That is substantive technical evaluation, not merely a popularity vote.

The announcement does not present a calibrated PERformer gain, efficiency or installed-current data set. Its result is a competition placing; the placing is not a substitute for those data. That distinction does not require guessing what the judges did privately or dismissing their work.

Mihran's September 2025 QST feature, pages 30–34, also distinguishes different kinds of evidence: its high-efficiency description comes from modelling, while its SWR table reports antenna-analyser measurements. The question is what each establishes—not whether the design deserves to be published.

What the Portable Compromise Actually Buys

The QST design uses a telescopic vertical radiator and two elevated, linked radials on 20–6 metres. It offers both a 90° radial span and opposite radials at 180°. Its loaded 40-metre arrangement uses a different configuration, including one longer radial; conclusions about the two-radial version should not simply be carried over to it.

Two wires and two outer supports are a real portable advantage: less material to carry and fewer conductors to place around a park operating position. Elevation can also keep a sparse radial system away from the strong soil interaction it would have lying on the ground. These are engineering reasons to consider the arrangement. No award is needed to make them sensible.

But the radial wires are part of the antenna, not just accessories that can be removed without changing the electromagnetic system. Their currents contribute fields and interact with the radiator, soil, feed line and surroundings. Equal, opposite radials can cancel much of their horizontal radiation; swinging them into a 90° sector changes that cancellation and can skew the pattern. A symmetric four-radial reference adds current paths in other directions and can make the installation less sensitive to a single disturbed radial. It also takes more wire and space.

That is the meaningful comparison: deployment economy versus control of the installed current distribution and coverage. Two radials are not inherently incapable of efficient operation, and four do not guarantee it. Nevertheless, for a reference intended to cover many azimuths, I prefer a deliberately symmetric radial layout over assuming that a convenient sector-shaped layout is equivalent. If the purpose is quick portable operation toward a chosen sector, the priorities can reasonably be different.

A Better Front-to-Back Ratio Can Still Mean Less Forward Signal

Removing or repositioning radials changes where current flows. It can alter both loss and directivity—the concentration of radiation in a particular direction. It does not add a new source of RF power.

Consider the original question with a simple numerical example. Both antennas below use the same accepted feedpoint power, and every number uses the same reference at a fixed elevation. These are illustrative values, not PERformer measurements.

The second antenna has acquired a 3 dB front-to-back ratio while becoming 1 dB weaker forward. The rear signal fell further; that is not a forward improvement. If each curve were separately rescaled to put its own maximum at 0 dB, the missing absolute level would be easy to overlook.

This does not mean that pattern redistribution can never provide directional gain. In linear units, gain equals radiation efficiency multiplied by directivity. An increase in directivity can outweigh a change in loss and produce a genuine advantage in a selected direction, at the expense of coverage elsewhere. Front-to-back ratio alone cannot tell us whether that happened.

N6LF's Four-Radial Result Does Not Become a Two-Radial Certificate

Slide 19 of the primer reproduces Rudy Severns' four-versus-sixty-four radial comparison. In N6LF's original QEX report, the 7.2 MHz experiment used a 33.5 ft vertical and 33 ft radials. Sixty-four surface radials gave +5.8 dB relative to four on the surface; elevating four radials and the antenna base to 48 inches gave +5.9 dB. That 0.1 dB difference supports the four-radial arrangement at his site, with deliberate common-mode isolation. It does not establish the same result for two.

His one-versus-four comparison in Table 3 is NEC modelling, not another measured test. At 8° elevation, the single-radial case was about 0.92 dB below the four-radial reference toward the radial and 3.47 dB below it in the opposite direction. It illustrates rear suppression without forward improvement in that model; it is not measured PERformer loss.

The value of Severns' work is the connection between geometry, current and result. Carrying its conclusion into a different radial count requires a new argument—not simply the authority of his name.

The Choke Is Part of the Comparison, Not an Afterthought

Mihran's QST article explicitly calls for a feedpoint RF choke. That requirement belongs in the discussion; it would be wrong to describe the published antenna as though it simply ignores the coax.

The physical reason matters more than the label on the component. If the outside of the coax carries appreciable current, the installed system includes that conductor too. A change in cable routing or length may then change the result that is being attributed to the two visible radials. A suitable choke impedes that path, but its useful impedance is frequency-dependent and its effect depends on the rest of the installation.

Likewise, an attractive SWR trace is evidence of a convenient input match, not proof that the intended conductors carry all the relevant current. Loss can absorb accepted power, and unintended conductors can radiate it in an altered pattern. Neither effect has to make the transmitter see a bad match.

For the PERformer-versus-reference question, the purpose of checking external current is therefore concrete: establish whether the comparison really is between the declared radial systems, or between two different combinations of radials, coax, support and nearby wiring.

Models and Contacts Each Tell Part of the Story

A NEC model is useful evidence about the declared geometry and assumptions. It can explain why the 90° layout favours a sector and help choose an installation. It cannot automatically include a support, cable or loss that was never entered. Nor does matching a measured resonant frequency validate every predicted gain figure. Keep directivity, gain and realised gain distinct; the last also includes mismatch to the stated feed impedance.

The PERformer's successful activations are meaningful too: they show that operators can deploy it and complete radio paths. But comparing different days, directions or distant stations mixes antenna behaviour with propagation, fading, receiver geography and operating choices. Do not ask the ionosphere to serve as an anechoic chamber.

For a small claimed directional advantage, a useful field comparison holds the geometry and power reference fixed, switches rapidly between the PERformer layout and a declared reference, and repeats the observations at relevant bearings. Cable or position cross-swaps help reveal systematic differences. Measurement uncertainty matters especially when the proposed advantage is around a decibel; a precise-looking result is not automatically a precise measurement.

My Answer to the Messages in the Inbox

I would not reject the PERformer because it uses two radials. I would reject the argument that its award settles the RF comparison. Its practical attraction is reduced deployment burden; its sector pattern may also be useful where that is the intended coverage. Those are defensible reasons to build it.

For broad, repeatable azimuth coverage, the extra wire in a symmetric radial reference buys a deliberate current-return geometry rather than a promise of free gain. If fewer radials achieve the required result at a particular site, that is a worthwhile portable compromise. It does not follow that removing conductors improved every relevant direction, preserved efficiency under every installation change, or made the design a universal benchmark.

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