No subject

I guess I'm just not smart enough to worry about all of the issues. My approach has been to just hang up 132' or 66' of wire fed in the center with open wire to a 4:1 balun near the house. My transition into the house is either something like LMR-240 or LMR-400 to my tuner. I can use this configuration either 80-10 or 40-10. Resonance? I really don't worry about it too much as my tuner can address the issue for me thereby making my transmitter happy. I don't worry about losses either. With low loss feeds, there is little loss, even at 10 meters, with SWRs as high as 10:1. Simplicity is key here. 

The antenna that I now have up is roughly equivalent to a 40 meter Carolina Windom, modified. My thinking on this gets a little convoluted, but it works. For a new installation with the room, I would suggest the center fed dipole with low loss feeds into a good tuner. And, oh yes, get it up as high as possible. 

73, 
Barry 
K3NDM 

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ken G Kopp" <kengkopp at gmail.com> 
To: elecraft at mailman.qth.net 
Sent: Wednesday, February 13, 2013 6:06:25 PM 
Subject: [Elecraft] OT: G5RV's and variants 

It's already been pointed out that the original article 
by G5RV indicated that the antenna was for 20M only. 
I have the original article in my files. 

I've always wondered why builders of the antenna 
simply don't make an open-wire fed Zepp and stop there. 
Why add a "magic" length of coax ... without any kind 
of impedance matching ... to what would otherwise be 
a Zepp? Yes, the length of the coax portion of the 
feeder acts as an impedance transformer ... on 20M. 
On other bands, all bets are off. (:-) 

The antenna requires an antenna tuner to operate on 
bands other than 20M. Many tuners contain a balun 
so one has the option of either coax or balanced line 
feeders. Why not avoid the coax-to-balanced line splice 
with it's almost certain mismatch losses and connect the 
balanced line portion of the G5RV's feeder directly to the 
tuner? If the tuner as no internal balun, one can be made 
or purchased. 

I once knew a local who actually coiled the coax portion 
of his G5RV's feed "system" behind his desk and then 
connected it to his tuner. The end of the balanced portion 
was within inches of his tuner's balanced line connections. 

The G5RV certainly qualifies as a "cult" antenna. 

73! 

Ken Kopp - K0PP 
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