Here again is the layout around my hourse, showing:

• The old antenna (ANT 2) down the hill, its feedpoint about as high as the roof of the house.

• The new antenna (ANT 1) up the hill, it's feedpoint about 14m above the roof of the house.

View from above:

Side View: 

Besides being located farther away from the house and in the clear, this new antenna also enjoys a lower take-off angle for clearing the top of the mountain (i.e., New Ant.: 30 deg.;  Old Ant.: 40 deg.)

IN THE A/B TESTS BELOW:

• All tests were conducted during the 2020 CQWW DX CW contest.

• The RF Gain was often turned down, and/or attenuation applied to reduce the signal levels to mid range on the S-Meter.

• The Receiver (an ICOM IC-7300) has 3 dB per S-Unit (not 6).

• "Nix" is German slang for "nothing at all".

• "New Ant" = "ANT-1"  ¦  "Old ANT" = "ANT-2"

COMMENTS:

Although in theory a major CW DX contest is a great opportunity to test antennas, it turned out to be a very difficult task, for several reasons:

• Contest Exchanges are very short, which doesn't allow much time for switching back and forth.

• On the low bands, the local (European) stations were usually stronger than the DX station that I was trying to copy.
  • The poor dicipline of th European stations who continued to call the DX even while he was transmitting made it difficult to copy the DX station.

• S-Meter response to the local stations made it difficult to read the signal strength of the DX station.

On several occasions, I simply gave up and did not record the station because it was impossible to be sure of the results.

NOISE:

Noise really was not an issue in the contest.  The only thing I distinctly observed was that the noise level on 15m was S1 on the old antenna and S0 on the new antenna.

SUMMARY OF RESULTS:

• Most of the time I could copy all the stations well enough on both antennas, but quite often, the new antenna was 1 to 2 S-Units stronger.

• The signal strength was often the same on both antennas.

• On rare occasions, the signal strength was stronger on the old antenna than on the new antenna.

• The biggest difference was seen when a band began to close. 
  • This was observed most often on 15m.  ​

• On several occasions, a station was perfectably readable on the new antenna but barely heard (if at all) on the old antenna.  This was recorded as "Nix".