On Thu, 1 Jun 2006 11:55:57 -0700 (PDT), Lee Buller wrote:
>I forgot that a dipole is 72 ohms
>.....and I am feeding it with 50 ohms.
Sort of, but not exactly. The impedance at resonance of a dipole
will vary with its height above ground, as well as soil
conditions. So there's no one good number. In general, a dipole
closer to earth will TEND to have a lower Z at resonance than a
higher one. There are some nice graphs of this in ON4UN's "Low
Band DXing."
Some other points.
1) The mismatch between 72 ohms and 50 ohms is on the order of
1.5:1.
2) Any imbalance in the length of the antenna, or the capacitance
to surrounding objects of the two legs of the antenna will
unbalance it, which can increase the SWR at resonance.
3) In general, an SWR of less than 2:1 is fine as long as it does
not cause the transmitter any problems (it usually won't) or cause
the transmitter to reduce power.
4) The increase in loss caused by a mismatch of less than about
4:1 is quite small. See the ARRL Antenna Book on this.
As a general rule of thumb, I use 75 ohm coax for high dipoles and
50 ohm coax for lower ones. The generally accepted definition of
"high" is more than a wavelength; "low" is less than a half
wavelength.
Jim Brown K9YC
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