Guess I'm not alone. I had similar experiences with my G5RV. Mine was
rigged as a horizontal inverted "V" because of space imitations. It
worked fine on 20 meters, but on 10 meters it was really dead. A 10
meter dipole in the attic outperformed it. I played with baluns and line
isolators and tried running 450 ohm ladder line almost all the way to
the shack, thinking that the coax was lossy. The kicker came when I put
up a low (16 FT) inverted "L" cut for 80 meters as a backup antenna for
traffic nets. The "L" was better than the G5RV. I took down G5RV and
replaced it with a loop cut for 40 meters. The loop works fine on all
bands, 40 and up. The inverted "L" is far better than the loop on 80
meters, passable on 40 but no match for the loop above 40 meters. On 80
meters the loop is really poor, as expected. (I don't know why magazine
articles and ads show loops operated significantly below their resonant
frequency. They just don't work at 1/2 freq, unless you open the
opposite corner with a switch or stub).
My antennas are really stealthy, especially the loop with its lower side
running along my fence (secured with black plastic electric fence
insulators). Shiny copper wire turns brown in a few weeks and blends in
nicely with the trees.
73,
Bob WB2VUF
AC5E@aol.com wrote:
>
> Well, HiGain has a non automatic bandswitching vertical for around 90 bux,
> and there are several other verticals that will get the job done as well. I
> worked 107 countries on 89 days on a Cushcraft R5, running a Paragon
> barefoot. But remember that a vertical is a good antenna beyond 1,000 miles
> or so, but contacts out to a few hundred miles get scarce and far between.
>
> As far as that goes, the G5RV is a very decent 20 Meter antenna. The problem
> there is it's essentially a dummy load on 160 and 80, and fair to poor on 40.
> If you are looking for a monoband antenna you might think of repairing or
> replacing what you had.
>
> But if you really want a multiband stealth wire, why not try an Alpha Delta
> DX-CC. A little flat black color on the traps makes it essentially invisible,
> and that trap dipole did a far better job for me than anything else I have
> tried that I can shoehorn into my tiny back yard. I have had extended 75
> Meter QSO's with both EI and ZL on the DX-CC running 5 watts, as well as
> plenty of other Q's on 40 and up.
>
> 73 Pete Allen AC5E
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