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[TowerTalk] Ladder Line Fed Dipole Issue

To: TowerTalk@contesting.com
Subject: [TowerTalk] Ladder Line Fed Dipole Issue
From: Tony <dxdx@optonline.net>
Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2018 13:14:28 -0400
List-post: <mailto:towertalk@contesting.com>
All:

I have an 80 meter dipole fed with 300 ohm ladder line that needed to be moved to a different location. The antenna is 110 feet long and the ladder line is attached to a DX Engineering 1:1 tuner balun with a short 10 foot run of coax. The length of the ladder line is cut to an odd multiple of the 80 meter wavelength.

The SWR on 80 meters was very high so I trimmed the ladder line a few inches which lowered it from 25:1 to 18:1. I continued to trim a few more inches and noticed no change: changing the coax length had no effect.

My question is: is it normal to expect an SWR to be that high on 80 meters with this setup? Should I continue trimming the feed line to find a length that presents a more reasonable SWR or look for other issues with the antenna system? The ladder line does not touch the ground, it's not folded onto itself and it's not near any metal object.

Tony

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