[K3PZN-List] VSWR, Analyzers

[Curt Milton]

Jim

well I use short verticals on 80 and 160m because I don't have anything available here to hold a wire up in the air!  (I do have trees - but they are 200+ feet from house, and down in a gully.  ON4UN encourages one to use a short vertical if necessary in his fine book on Low Band DX.  I have done 'ok' on these bands.  


our somewhat new ham Ray is now understanding the G5RV.  I suggested to him it was best suited for 20, 40 and 80m - and he went out and worked a ZL on 10m SSB!  important to encourage and aid all newer hams (the few we are blessed with) - remembering we all are 'amateurs' and still learning.  


I get away using balanced line for my 'backup' antenna here, but Andy, Jim and Pete can tell you about my ill-fated experiment with it at FD (without any kind of local ground).  


CUL Curt



________________________________
 From: "wa3mej at comcast.net" <wa3mej at comcast.net>
To: Curt Milton <wb8yyy at yahoo.com>; Carroll County Amateur Radio Club <k3pzn-list at mailman.qth.net> 
Sent: Tuesday, March 6, 2012 6:40 PM
Subject: Re: [K3PZN-List] VSWR, Analyzers
 


Curt, 

After 46 years as a ham I become very skeptical of short antennas. The G5RV is a poor radiator on most bands and is better described as stop gap antenna one to be used if nothing else is there.  One of the best antenna (for newbies especially) is a half wave dipole fed with a quarter wave length of open wire line and tuned with a true ballanced tuner (easy to build and cheap too). For example half wave lenght on 80m with the appropriate quarter wavelentgh feed will tune 160-10M easily. 



If you dont want to use the ballanced tuner then purchase a REMOTE BALUN from Radioworks and put it at the end of the ballanced line and run coax the rest of the way into the house. If you cant tune this system with your external tuner.. then just add about 20ft or so more coax in the line and it changes the feed impedance to the back of the tuner.  Not very elegant but it works.  Tony KF3AK is doing this now and it works great 



Ref. JT65 .. there is not much to talk about .. down load it and try it.. it is so simple even a trained chimp can use it 



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