[Elecraft] Balun with a G5RV?

[George, W5YR]

My first station on 20 meters in 1946 used the old brown TV twinlead folded
dipole. It really worked great and with no knowledge whatsoever of SWR and
all that stuff - at age 16! - I just put it up and worked DX on 20. I
finally built the Twin Lamp SWR indicator that came out in QST and hooked
it onto the line. One lamp should have been bright and the other dark for
1:1 SWR. On mine both lamps lit up the same! Disconnected that thing and
went back to working DX.

I finally found that coating the feedline with Johnson Paste Wax would help
bead up the moisture and reduce the detuning effect. Never thought of using
bacon grease!   <:}

Those were exciting days!

73/72/oo, George W5YR - the Yellow Rose of Texas         
Fairview, TX 30 mi NE of Dallas in Collin county EM13qe   
Amateur Radio W5YR, in the 56th year and it just keeps getting better!
QRP-L 1373 NETXQRP 6 SOC 262 COG 8 FPQRP 404 TEN-X 11771 I-LINK 11735
Icom IC-756PRO #02121  Kachina 505 DSP  #91900556  Icom IC-765 #02437


Ron D' Eau Claire wrote:
> 
> > When I first got my license a lot of hams were using TV 300 ohm twin lead
> > for feed line, and for folded dipole antennas.  When it rained,
> > the loss in
> > the 300 ohm twin lead went up.  One trick we learned was to coat the twin
> > lead with bacon grease.  Not that I would recommend it today, but
> > it helped.
> 
> > 73, Chas, W1CG
> 
> Har! I can imagine what the raccoons, and other critters around here (on the
> edge of a wetlands) would do with that bacon grease, Hi!
> 
> Actually, a folded dipole made up of 300 ohm twin lead and fed with the same
> twinlead was one of the BEST ways to use that stuff, since it should have
> presented an impedance of close to 300 ohms to the feeder so it did not
> produce a real high SWR on the line.
> 
> I did that in my early days too, and experienced the same detuning issues
> though - a sure sign I wasn't very close to resonance. But then I didn't
> even hear about an SWR bridge (nor did anyone I knew have one) for almost
> another 10 years <G>