[TowerTalk] OCF 160

[Jim Jarvis]

<snip>
I have two trees on my property. They are 195' apart. I am thinking of an
OCF dipole with 45' and 90' legs with a 6:1 autotransformer at the feedpoint
connected to 50 ohm coax (buckmaster style).  This nicely brings the
feedline directly over my shack.  But, I have lots more length available to
me to the far tree that is going unused.

I was thinking of a way to use that space for 160m instead of rope.  Here's
my thought and could someone tell me what I'm smoking or if it may be
feasible?

Do you think it might be feasible to place an 80m trap at the end of the
longer leg of the ocf, and extend a wire beyond the trap for 160m. The idea
would be to use only one of the coax conductors against a radial field for
160, but use the antenna as a OCF using both conductors for 10-80?

In that way, I can get both a balanced 10-80 meter ocf AND an inverted L
unbalanced antenna for 160 using the same installation (not at the same
time, of course!) Any one know what the existance of a trap and extra wire
beyond the trap might affect the OCF performace when being used as a regular
ocf?
<snip>

Eugene...

How high are the trees?  100-120'?  Run a 1.8MHz OCF, and fold down the
extra wire at the ends.
If they're 75-80' high, you might want to consider a vertical Tee or Ell or
'double L', per YCCC.

A minor semantic point,in your fourth paragraph...OCF antennas are
unbalanced, period.


Jim/N2EA