[Heathkit] Broadband dipoles

[Kenneth G. Gordon]

On 24 Nov 2006 at 21:49, Peter Markavage wrote:

> It almost sounds like an inverted Vee turnstyle antenna except you
> normally feed the second Vee with a quarter wave length of 75 ohm
> cable between it and the other antenna input if you're using 50 ohm
> coax to feed the "array". This provides you with a 360 onmi
> directional pattern generally good for the frequencies at which the
> antennas are cut. I'm not sure what kind of radiation pattern you're
> getting just putting the antennas in parallel and at 90 degrees to
> each other. Were you feeding them with open wire line? 

No. 50 ohm coax. The two inverted-vee antennae were cut for 80 and 
40 meters, and were also being used as the top guy wires to hold up a 
33 foot vertical. If there had been enough height, they would have been 
cut for 160 and 80 instead, but weren't.

The vertical was fed at the base with 50 ohm coax via a tuner and was 
used to work 40/20/15/10 meters. The vertical was 1/4 wave on 40, 1/2 
wave on 20, 3/4 wave on 15, and one wave on 10. It didn't work 
particulary well on 10 meters, as far as we could tell (maybe it was 
simply lousy band conditions) but worked quite well on the other bands.

The entire "array" was mounted on top of a chimney on the top of a two-
story house.

4 "ground radials" cut for 40 meters were attached at the bottom of the 
vertical, so it looked somewhat like a large ground-plane antenna.

It was a "compromise" antenna at best, yet worked quite well for what it 
was.

The radiation pattern seemed to be pretty much omni-directional. We 
never tested it rigorously, but we could work everything we could hear 
with a 100 watt output transceiver.

One support, all bands (except WARC).

Ken W7EKB