RE: [TenTec] 80m antenna suggestion

["Rick Westerman" <Rick@dj0ip.de>]

My turn on this "Never-Ending Story".

There has been lots of good suggestions made and a few
questionable ones.
The trade-off of signal strength and mechanical stability for
bandwidth is what kept me away from the Bazooka antenna.

Here is an antenna that works:

(My challenge is to describe it without a picture!)

Imagine each leg of the dipole to look like a half circle with a
line drawn between the two ends of a half circle.  What we get is
a dipole consisting of two half circles with the flat part on top
and the round part drooping down.  Make the total length of that
half circle one wavelength on 80m. Of course this assumes you
have enough height to keep the bottom of the half circle high
enough off the ground that it is out of the reach of humans.


Feed it like a normal dipole.  I prefer to feed it with a coaxial
choke but a good balun is also OK.

This antenna will give you full band coverage here in Europe (3.5
to 3.8 MHz) while keeping the SWR under 2:1.

You have to play with (adjust) the length a bit to get its center
frequency where you want it.

So far for my experience.  Now for a theoretical suggestion:

Feed it with open wire and a tuner and you get all band operation
plus a high-performance broad-banded 80m antenna that doesn't
require retuning the matchbox all the time.

The only downside (that I see) is that you must have the center
and the ends pretty high to keep the lower part of the antenna
out of reach of humans.

73
Rick






http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/tentec


_______________________________________________
TenTec mailing list
TenTec@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/tentec