[TowerTalk] Improving the Dipole/Doublet

[Lee A Crocker]

My suggestion is to throw a box of plant food around
each tree in hopes they grow higher, and forget about
improving the dipole.  Put up a vertical to buttress
areas where the dipole is weak.  

There is very little you can do fiddling around with a
couple of feet of height or length that's going to
make a whit of difference.  You could improve the feed
of what you describe, but even that isn't going to
make much difference in the overall performance
relative to what is lacking in the basic design of the
antenna, namely take off angle.  It's nice if you have
150 ft trees, but most of us have 30-60 ft trees and
you get 30-60ft performance plus or minus a DB or two.

The radials are a bit of a pain but once they are in,
they are in.  You don't need 120 radials, 20 to 30
will do you just fine.

73  W9OY