At VHF, ground reflections at any reasonable height rapidly shift through peaks and nulls. Thus I will change the usual environment to that of free space when generating pat- terns at these frequencies. Fig 19-1 illustrates the point. Here you have the elevation patterns of identical 145 MHz reference dipoles, constructed of the same 0.25 inch aluminum tubing that I will use for the Yagis to come. One antenna is mounted 40 feet above real ground; the other is mounted in free space. The rapid fluctuations of field strength over ground tend to distract from the comparison between antenna designs. You will need to keep in mind if comparing antenna results that the main lobe gain of a free- space dipole is 2.13 dBi, while the gain of a dipole at the peak of the first elevation lobe over typical ground is 7.67 dBi. The difference of 5.54 dB is due to ground reflection gain and is close to the theoretical limit of 6 dBi. The ground reflection gain should be carried over when evaluating other free space designs.