[TowerTalk] Fwd: Resonance is over rated

[hanslg at aol.com]

Isn't the discussion really what a good antenna system is all about?

To my knowledge it is important to get as much power in the radiating part as possible or have as little losses as possible in the rest of the system.

1) If you have a coax cable, especially if it is long (or lossy, same thing) you want to minimize the SWR as that leads to minimum loss in the cable.

2) You want to have as high ration of radiating resistance to ohmic resistance in you radiating element as possible also to minimize you losses.

A dipole is a good example of a radiator with (usually) high ration radiation/ohmic resistance. (If you use a steel wire or a very thing Cu wire well ...) A 6" nail is rather useless as radiatior (but I can tune it though).

In my humble opinion you place the best antenna tuner as close to the antenna you can and tune it up so you have as low SWR as you can in your feed cable. If you, like me, use a low loss ladder feed to your antenna you can move the tuner closer to your radio shack (convenience if nothing else) without loosing to much power in the system.

It is not the radiating element that has to be in resonance (my opinion) it is whatever a coax is feeding (and your TRX for that matter, as that "likes" 50 Ohms load). I have been using longwires, short and long verticals and even aluminum ladders as antennas with relaively good result, but I have always used a tuner at the TRX end to insure my TRX "sees" the correct load.

Hans - N2JFS