Originally Posted by Old Fart
You never want to point the antenna at the plane. ALL antennas (of this type anyway) have a null straight "up". 72 mHz, 35 mHZ also have that problem. In the old days before we had "no code hams", we all learned that for VHF/UHF operations
People have a natural tendency to point the antenna at the plane. "Bending" it 90 degrees makes it pretty un-natural to do that.
I haven't seen any RF studies that show 90 is better than anything else (but I bend mine at 90 when it comes out of the case anyway)
How it was put to me was to consider the usual attitude of the Rx antena and my Tx antena should parellel it. Of course we know that the model will fly all sorts of attitudes but we normal sport flyers usually spend more time on the level than most ... OK if a 3D - then antena is vertical ?
Funny in the days 35mHz .... very few radios allowed you to alter antena out of Tx ... there were a few where pilots tended to fly on trays etc. and the Tx was flat ... then they angled their antenas vertical !! Well the guys I saw did !!