Given all the hoorah, I'll add my .02 worth -
Late last Spring I relocated to my current QTH, which afforded me the
ability to run abt 100M of loop, very stealthily (yes, I live in one of
THOSE neighborhoods) from rooftop and thru the trees in a very 'open' shape.
I also ran a multiple rod dedicated RF ground for the shack in my yard,
concealed pretty well in shrubs and ground cover. The feed was a 50' run of
window from the balun output of the MFJ-949e to feedpoint. In short, tuning
was unimpressive, and sharp in places. RF talked to many things in the
house, including my PC, printer and smoke detectors. Switching out to RG-58
and placing a hb balun at the feed settled things down nicely.
More recently the PoS grade MFJ got upgraded to a Dentron Super Tuner. Again
I went back to see what was up. The only real improvement with the open feed
was less tendency for the tuner to saturate on low bands if not within a
reasonable SWR, attributable to the Dentron, no doubt. Back to the RG-58.
With the Dentron & loop I can even get an acceptable SWR on 160M, which is
as it should be. My house is RF quiet.
I don't care to recall how many times I've read-to-sleep abt the pro's,
con's and qualities of either method of feed. What I do know is that in my
situation, I can hear and get out when a band is open. Everything in the
house and 'hood is happy. Relative line loss and a lot of other things
become very secondary.
and that's my story, and I'm stickin' to it . . .
73,
Tom North N5OZQ
|