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Re: [TowerTalk] 40-30m dipole design

To: jimlux <jimlux@earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] 40-30m dipole design
From: Tod <tod@k0to.us>
Date: Fri, 18 Mar 2016 04:27:38 -0600
List-post: <towertalk@contesting.com">mailto:towertalk@contesting.com>
Paul, what is the point of this speculation? A single antenna that covers two 
bands? A rotary antenna for 40 and 30? 

Get someone  to model for you a dipole, center fed,  that has the length you 
can put in place. Find from the model how it will radiate on 40 & 30 if you can 
feed power to the antenna. Find the feed point impedance and pick a feedline 
that 'suits' you --- almost certainly you will end the modeling exercise with 
standing waves on the feedline. 

Feed the station end of feedline using an antenna tuner so your transmitter 
will deliver power to the feedline ( and as a result to the dipole).  If the 
SWR on the feedline is 10:1 or less quit spending time on the design and go 
ahead and build and use the antenna. If you decide to use open wire line for 
all or part of the feedline from the station to the antenna don't worry about 
feedline losses even if they are greater than 10:1 . 

I will leave to others to reassure you that the power will go out to the 
antenna and, while some may be lost in the feedline, the rest of the power will 
go into the antenna and be radiated. Do not bother with traps, center mid-point 
or end. The objective is not to make a resonant antenna, but rather a dipole 
which is resonant at some frequently, not necessarily the one you plan to 
transmit on. Getting close to the frequency you want to transmit on is good, 
but not a requirement. 

What I have written above does not produce an optimum antenna. It should 
produce one that will work satisfactorily. It also should take a lot less 
effort to create and install. 

Careful examination of the difference between optimum and this sub-optimum 
version in terms of radiated power will show that the degradation from optimum 
is not really significant in terms of on the air results. 

Even if only half the power were radiated, the signal will be only 3 dB lower 
than if all were radiated. For almost all operating this will be of no 
consequence. If it is of consequence you have a completely different objective 
than I perceived while reading your initial email.

Tod, K0TO







Sent from my iPad air


> On Mar 17, 2016, at 4:09 PM, jimlux <jimlux@earthlink.net> wrote:
> 
>> On 3/17/16 2:54 PM, jimlux wrote:
>>> On 3/17/16 12:40 PM, Jim Brown wrote:
>>>> On Thu,3/17/2016 12:14 PM, jimlux wrote:
>>>> There's no big advantage to linear loading: you might as well use a
>>>> good low loss inductor at the feed (the "shorty 40" does this).
>>> 
>>> Are you certain about this, Jim? Both change the current distribution,
>>> but linear loading changes it least at the center, where current is
>>> greatest. The inductor places maximum current in the inductor, which
>>> doesn't radiate.
>> 
>> I agree.. It's like base loading a vertical (with a top hat perhaps) vs
>> loading it half way up.  BUT, a 30m dipole isn't that much shorter than
>> a resonant 40m dipole, so the current distribution is nicely modeled by
>> the usual "half a sine wave from end to end".  That current distribution
>> doesn't have significantly different gain (1.93 dBi vs 2.14 dBi).
>> However, if a infinitely small dipole is 1.5dBi and a full size dipole
>> is 2.15dBi, the gain is going to be somewhere in the middle.
> 
> I just ran a NEC model (using 4NEC2 to compute the matching network).. the 15 
> meter long (30m band) dipole with a T network (91nH series, 352pF shunt, 7.47 
> uH series) has 1.75 dBi gain (vs 2.14dBi for ideal dipole).
> 
> The 2:1 bandwidth is a bit more than  300 kHz; 1.5:1 bandwidth is about 150 
> kHz.
> 
> I leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out the voltages and 
> currents on the components (which was the original question)
> 
> 
> So, in summary
> 
> full size 40m dipole: 2.15 dBi gain
> 75% size dipole: 1.93 dBi gain
> 75% size dipole with coil Q 250, cap Q 1000: 1.75 dBi gain   (about 80-84 
> degree 3dB beamwidth)
> 
> 
> the 40 m full size antenna has a swr of 1.4:1 at best and a 2: 1 BW of about 
> 400 kHz (not much wider than the 75% sized antenna with a matching network).  
> And the match is better with the matching network (50 ohms vs 72 ohms.
> 
> The beamwidth of the full size is slightly narrower (76-80 deg)
> 
> 
> 
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