[Elecraft] OT:. G5RV's

[Fred Jensen]

Ummm ... my HP48GX says 102' is very very close to 3 half-waves at 14 
MHz which sounds sort of resonant-ish.  Maybe a little known bug in my 
calculator?

On a similar path, I decided to try out the 80-10 EFHW from MyAntennas 
as an HOA Stealth antenna strung along the top of a 6' fence.  It's 130' 
long, has a 6 turn series inductor wound on a Sch 40 PVC fitting a short 
distance out from a heavy-ish box with an SO-239.  I figured there might 
be a 50 ohm resistor in the box a la the famous B&W folded dipole that 
graces many National Guard Armories.

The impedance sweep when I got it yielded close enough to 50+j0 ohms on 
all bands ... except 60 m that my K3/100 is happy without the KAT3.  It 
also revealed nearly infinite impedance between the bands, sort of 
ruling out the resistor [I've come to believe it's a transformer, maybe 
of the "auto" variety].

It works surprisingly well.  On 80 and 40 it's pretty NVIS, which 
happens to be what I'm looking for.  Above 40, the pattern starts to 
become more complex and much less vertical if I can believe EZNEC.  6' 
AGL is obviously not optimal ... except for our HOA and the CC&R's ... 
but I'm very surprised at how well it does, especially at the bottom of 
the cycle.

This list seems to have a number of antenna experts aboard [and maybe a 
few who play antenna experts on TV] ... would anyone like to 'splain to 
me how it achieves low SWR on all bands?  I could probably ferret that 
out with enough time, but if someone already knows ...

73,

Fred K6DGW
Sparks NV
Washoe County DM09dn

On 8/4/2016 1:41 PM, Wes Stewart wrote:

> It's a pity that too many newcomers, as well as many oldsters, are
> enamored by this piece of wire.  First, a 102' length is not resonant on
> 20-meters, so in common jargon, it's *n