Another brilliant post, Kelly. The OCF dipole has a varying pattern with
deep nulls on some bands and it's difficult to choke. However it loads on
multiple bands and you can work some stations with it, so it is popular. I
doubt most people that buy one have modeled it. The magical all band 43 foot
vertical is similar example. A dipole or fan dipole would be my inexpensive
wire antenna choice.
John KK9A
To: Wilson Lamb <infomet@embarqmail.com>
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] OCF Dipole
From: "ve4xt@mymts.net" <ve4xt@mymts.net>
Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2016 12:13:49 -0600
Funny that you'd think those who don't like the OCF design would instead be
touting "commercial stuff with funny matching devices and impressive names."
Home-made dipole, home-made choke. Fan dipole if needing more than one band.
Be
quieter, won't cause RF problems in the shack, and just as cheap as an OCF.
As for feedline radiation helping with DX, consider a low OCF is going to
have,
by itself, a similar take-off angle as a low dipole. So if it's the vertical
portion doing the work on DX, why waste the energy being radiated into the
clouds by the horizontal component?
Why not just build a vertically oriented antenna by itself and have all the
energy going to DX?
Again, doesn't need to be "commercial stuff with funny matching devices and
impressive names." A wire dipole, oriented vertically, with bent legs if
needed
to accommodate for height, fed with a home-made choke, which can be as
simple
as eight turns of RG-8x sized coax through a biggest clamp-on, would work
well.
You can put up almost anything as an antenna and you will work stuff. That
by
itself, however, doesn't mean it's the best you can do for the money and for
your situation.
If something works for you and you're happy with it, then by all means, all
the
power to you.
Learning about the downfall of your design doesn't hurt, though, does it?
73, kelly, ve4xt
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