[TowerTalk] OCFD: Should I be able to do better?12

[Donald Chester]

Keith Dutson kdutson at sbcglobal.net Thu May 27 16:26:33 EDT 2021 wrote:

> How do you build a better antenna to cover all bands between 160 and 6 meters?  I am waiting for your response.

Put up a dipole approximately half-wavelength, preferably for 160m, but if lacking the room, an 80m half-wave will work fairly well on 160m if high enough and fed efficiently.  Get it up as high as possible.  Feed with open-wire line, preferably real OWL with two parallel conductors separated by spacers every few feet, to the "crappy brown stuff" which is basically heavy duty TV antenna ribbon with rectangular holes punched in the dielectric every few inches. Adjust  the length of the feed-line to avoid odd eights-wavelengths on any band, so that the shack end of the feedline is NOT midway between a voltage and a current loop.  Use a BALANCED tuner to feed the OWL, not an unbalanced tuner with a balun between the ATU and feedline.  Baluns are designed to work into a specific non-reactive load, such as 50Ω +j0, not a highly reactive load at random impedance you may get with OWL tuned feeders. And BTW, the OWL is SUPPOSED to operate with standing waves.

Get mo' fiyah in the wiyah, and get the wiyah hiyah!

Don k4kyv