[RTTY] Antennas

[Bob Wanderer]

One of the best antennas I've ever used appeared in CQ
Magazine in the early 1980's -- I think January 1984.

It was a modified "Windom" OCF (Windom in quotes because it
was fed with coax).  It was a nominal half-wave 80 meter
antenna fed 15% off-center so the two legs were 90 and 44
feet.  The feedpoint was fed with 450-Ohm ladder line (I
used 300-Ohm twin lead; it worked okay but the SWR was
higher when it rained).  I believe its length was either
44.5 or 49.5 feet, probably the latter.  A W2AU or W2DU
balun (4:1 or 9:1, which may be more difficult to find and
may be one of the reasons I went with twin lead; which at
the time was easier to get from Radio Shack) and then coax
of any length into the shack.  In my case, I ran the twin
lead directly to the balun on my MFJ 989 tuner.  Run through
trees, maybe 25 feet off the ground at the feedpoint, much
less (8 feet maximum) at the ends in a northern New Jersey
house that was in a valley with hills quite close
(especially to the east), I worked Caribbean stations on 160
meters (CW I believe) and Europeans on 75 meters phone.  I
thought that was pretty good with a nominal 100W PEP.
However, these were in contests so it is probable that the
other station had some good antennas.

Anyway, the real beauty of the antenna was that it would
handle all the bands from 160 through 10.  If you couldn't
do the full 134', 66' fed in the same ratio would do 80~10.
I don't recall if the 450-Ohm portion had to be reduced too.

73,
Bob AA0CY