I had a brief window of opportunity this morning to run a test of the 3 antennas I have available for 2200m. The reason I said brief opportunity... (1) The 10 db of noise riding and radiating from the powerlines, that I nearly always have present, was absent early in this morning.
(2) Ham station WB5MMB (a tad over 200 miles from me) was providing me with a nearly constant signal strength on 2200m in wspr2 mode.
The antennas:
(1) L400B e-probe. Up about 15 ft. and away from the house.
(2) Low noise vertical... 20 ft. of wire in a tree in backyard.
(3) 22" resonant loopstick about 4 ft. above ground and away from the house.
So, with fairly ideal conditions, I ran a 3 way test with the antennas. Here's how it shook out:
The L400B seemed to be the best antenna during the time the noise was absent. The Vertical was roughly 2-3db behind the L400B. The loopstick was roughly 4db below the wire antenna. So again, in ideal conditions the L400B was the best performer.
The rest of the story:
Soon after the test was made, the powerline noise returned. Both probe and vertical were hit with 10db of noise and the received signal reports suffered accordingly.
The loopstick, orientated for minimum local noise, took and held the lead by 3 to 4db over both omni antennas.
The bottom line which we all know is that a small antenna that can produce a null on a local noise source, will often outperform the better omni antennas in the presence of said noise.