[TenTec] Parallel Dipoles On the Same Coax

[Jim Brown]

On Mon, 23 Aug 2004 06:43:35 -0400, Jason Buchanan wrote:

> Does this require a tuner or should the SWR be low? 

Parallel wire multi-band dipoles (multiple dipoles on the same coax) act just 
like ordinary single-wire dipoles. There's excellent discussion of them in the 
ARRL Handbook or Antenna Book -- don't recall which. I read it carefully 
before building several myself, and they act exactly as predicted.  
 
If you've done it right, you won't need a tuner for bands that are narrow 
enough that a resonant dipole covers the entire band. That includes all 
bands 40-12 meters. 160, 80, and 10 are the ringers -- they are rather wide 
in terms of percentage bandwidth, and you will likely require a tuner to cover 
the entire band.  No different than with a conventional dipole. 

As with any antenna in the real world, you WILL need to tweak it to 
resonance at your chosen frequency based on how it interacts with  
surrounding objects. 

Jim Brown  K9YC