[TowerTalk] Broadbanding a dipole

[Jim Lux]

At 11:12 AM 1/30/2006, Tod wrote:
> > ...I use 2" irrigation tubing for a dipole on 40 meters.  The
> > dipole has a usable bandwidth of about .5Mhz
>
>I suspect the 2" tubing is to minimize droop on 40 meters rather than VSWR
>across the band. Last I heard we only were allowed to use 300 kHz.
>
>Tod, K0TO


Wide feedpoint bandwidth has other advantages. It implies that your antenna 
will be less sensitive to component variations (movement of the antenna, 
birds sitting on it, pieces falling off, etc.). If you've got a design that 
has 10% bandwidth (700 kHz on 7MHz, for instance), you probably don't need 
to cut the elements to millimeter precision.