[Elecraft] Rick & antennas...

[Charlie T, K3ICH]

I forget the name of it, (MAX-something) but there was an "antenna" produced back in the 70's that consisted of a sealed center box with a coax connector on the bottom and two eyes to attach dipole wires.  The ads claimed good match from 80 thru 10 M.  It was basically a 50 Ω non-inductive resistor across the feed line which also connected to the two eyes.  It was potted, so you had to destroy it to see what was inside.   If did in fact radiate a little and of course provided a decent match to the coax. 

Another "slightly" more efficient antenna was produced by the venerable B & W Company and sold as a wide band dipole.   It's coax feed point had a 6:1 balun which fed a fairly wide (12" ??) spaced 90 foot folded dipole which was terminated with a 600 Ω  *resistor in the center, physically right above the center fed balun.  We had one at Microlog and used it quite successfully on the HAM bands as well as the Marine SITOR freqs, however, a random 100 foot dipole fed directly with coax thru an MN-2700 generally worked better.

My point here is that there is a wide range of antenna types & performance and they all work to some degree.

Hard to beat a simple resonant dipole though.

I agree with Joe.  Nothing wrong with traps either, especially since there's no 'tuner' required.

73, Charlie k3ICH



*  (Might be wrong on the value....seems it should be 300 Ω.  Then again, maybe the balun was 12:1)