[Antennas] Dipole vs random wire

[Jim Reid]

In my 53 year experience as a ham operator,  a dipole
antenna has,  to me,  always implied one cut,  on purpose,
for a particular band.

A DOUBLET antenna,  not a random wire,  is a center fed
wire antenna,  of "some" length.  It must be tuned-up using
an in-the-shack antenna tuner.  It probably can be tuned
sufficiently well to do a pretty good job radiating on bands
down to something like where the overall doublet wire length
is about 1/2 wave long.  A doublet cannot do too well at
frequencies whose waves are longer than about double
the doublet wire length.  Yes,  and before this sort was
called a doublet,  some called them "extended zeps"  I am
told,  but that was before 1950, I guess.  Only on one band
will a doublet have that nice cardioid radiation pattern which
the one band dipole antenna has.

A random wire antenna is just that.  However much wire you
can string out to somewhere,  hi.

73,  Jim  KH7M