I've had Awsomely poor luck with long wire antennas.. the need for a
good ground conterpoise/earth ground, the arcin' and sparkin' behavior,
shocks, burns, pssssssstttttts, RF in the shack, very peaky tuning etc.
just dont make them a pleasurable experience for me. Now take that same
length of wire to the nearest multiple wavelength at the lowest
frequency of interest, place it in a loop thrown up into the trees
horizontally (or Vertically if you have the sky hook), feed it with
balanced open wire, and you got a primo multi band DX antenna. I had a
+/- 520' loop (2 Wavelengths on 80 oopps forgot the velocity factor oh
well!) of Cheap #10 stranded THHN (Hello Home Depot) and that was a
multi-band antenna that comfortably worked DX like no tomorrow, was easy
to tune without arcin' and sparkin', could receive just about anything,
lightning crashes were significantly attenuated in A/B comparisons.
Some have had success feeding it with a ? to 1 Balun and 50 ohm coax,
but some of the bands get pretty wierd SWR curves. It resonates every
wavelength of the applied frequency. Some will argue about the
indeterminate pattern, the unknown angle of radiation etc. but this
antenna beat every dipole, folded dipole, open wire zepp, Windom, G5RV,
vertical (YUK!), long wire antenna I've ever tried.
Next question is why won't a 20 meter Quad tune up on 10 meters?
Oooopppss.. another of my secrets got out.
'73 KI4Z
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