FWIW: I have an inverted-V terminated dipole and a half sloper on the same
tower. Tower is a TX-455 with a SteppIR on top. The half sloper is
attached to the top of the middle section of the tower. The inverted-V is
attached about 6' below the top of the tower (via a line that goes to the
top; needed for crankdown).
The half-sloper tunes (more or less) on 160 (about 100 Khz worth) and 80/75
(about 350 Khz worth). It also tunes on 40 meters, but is odd on this
band. The tower has about 30 radials of various lengths. I attribute the
wide bandwidths of the half sloper to the variety of paths down the tower
(through the sliding sections, a parallel wire connecting the top and
bottom, coax coupling, etc) and maybe the less-than-ideal radials. (There
is about 50' between the rig and the tower; coax under ground; anything
less than 3:1 SWR is OK for me.)
Neither antenna (dipole or half sloper) is much good on 160, on good winter
nights I can hear and work about half the U.S on CW; no DX. The half
sloper is generally better than the dipole on 80, but not always. In rare
cases the sloper is better on 40 than either the inverted V or the SteppIR
(with 40m trombone).
I *think* I have the antennas staggered such that they do not interfere
with each other very much. The terminated dipole (from TenTec, who stopped
making them for good reason) is not resonant. I like having the choice of
antennas and flip between them when trying to catch a weak signal. I
recently obtained a set of large 43-material "chokes" and hope this will
reduce the noise on the sloper (and the SteppIR) when I get around to
installing the chokes. (Threading four or five turns of buryflex through
four or five toroids and getting the whole thing to hang neatly is easier
said than done!)
Bill - W2WO
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