[Boatanchors] Antenna Question...

[Bry Carling]

Thanks to everyone for their helpful comments...

One thing for sure - I am NOT moving house to get up a better antenna! That will not 
happen!

I am thinking of just keeping my LDG tuner for the 4BTV vertical. It works well for fine tuning 
that at a distance since the SWR is already close. I might add the 80m resonator on the top 
that I have here and make it a 5BTV, add a few radials. I didn't mention that when I use the 
LDG AT100 ProII with the ladderline, I have a 4:1 balun in line and a short stub of coax, per 
the LDG recommendation. However, I get RF into the radio and it garbles the sidetone. It 
even reset the entire FT857D radio yesterday and wiped out all the custom settings.

But back to the question of the future of my 102 foot wire dipole. As you know I was 
considering making this an end fed (mostly horizontal) antenna up 10-25 feet. 
I once used an ICOM AH4 as a remote outdoor tuner with an end fed longwire and it worked 
extremely well for me. It sure tuned a long wire very well! Perhaps my LDG would if I used it 
with the balun and connected one distal side to ground. However, there is that whole "RF in 
the shack" issue with doing that! (what they Don't talk about in the ads!)

In any event I don't think it will kill my signal to have 15 feet of coax out to the base of the end 
fed wire, and the shielding of the coax will get most of the RF away from the shack.  I know  
tthat a tuner outdoors would do far better for this. 

With all the suggestions guys sent me nobody made many comments on my option number 
3.  One guy did say that radials / counterpoise will work better than just a ground rod.
I think he is right, but the main thing for me is that the antenna will need to work on all bands 
160 - 6m, and I think I can pull that off without going to a G5RV or having to have 100 feet of 
ladderline piled up for the dipole. 

Are there other modern tuners similar to the AH4?

I may just have to somehow add dipoles for 6m and 30m to get the best out of those two 
favored bands.

Again many thanks to everyone for your comments.

73 - Bry AF4K

On 30 Mar 2013 at 19:24, Bill and Liz wrote:

From:           	"Bill and Liz" <magoo at isp.ca>
To:             	"Brian Carling AF4K" <bcarling at cfl.rr.com>
Subject:        	Re: [Boatanchors] Antenna Question...
Date sent:      	Sat, 30 Mar 2013 19:24:52 -0400

> Brian-
> 
> Most of the modern commercial tuners will not tune a long wire worth
> a darn. 
> I would homebrew an L-match circuit with lots of L and C, possibly
> additional caps which can be shunted in and out.  Want to be really
> sure? 
> Plave an RF ammeter in the line...an 0-3A meter will work fine for
> 100 
> watts.  Just watch that meter as you tune and match for max output. 
> I ran 
> this with a 135 ft longwire for years and it worked super.
> 
> 73, Bill VE3NH 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -----
> No virus found in this message.
> Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
> Version: 2013.0.3267 / Virus Database: 3161/6216 - Release Date:
> 03/31/13
>