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Re: Horizontal Delta Loop Questions

Posted by Rick McClelland, AA5S on Jan 05, 2012; 4:52pm
URL: http://elecraft.85.s1.nabble.com/Horizontal-Delta-Loop-Questions-tp7154769p7155116.html

Guy,

Thank you for taking the time to respond, I had a feeling that I would be
well served by posting this question.  I was aware that doublets needed to
trimmed to non-resonant lengths but I didn't realize the same might be true
regarding loops.  Looking at the current system on my spreadsheet, there
aren't any resonant points at the low end of any of the ham bands so your
advice seems to have some objective truth evident.  Last weekend I trimmed
my ladder line by removing 13' from the 100' length and I notice that I'm
having much better results when adjusting the tuner and I'm also now able
to achieve a decent match on 10 and 6 meters.   I'll take your advice and
leave things as they are (unless the irrational urge to extend the length
of the loop by 20' to 40' overwhelms me in the spring.)

Best Wishes,

Rick, AA5S


On Thu, Jan 5, 2012 at 9:27 AM, Guy Olinger K2AV <[hidden email]>wrote:

> In an antenna design where one is already committed to a broadband
> feedline and a tuner, particularly one that is working, making the antenna
> "resonant" may actually WORSEN your results.  Efficiency is not hide bound
> to "resonance".  What most people mean by resonance is a low Z feedpoint
> that has no reactive component, and also want to feed it with 50 ohm coax
> with no further devices.  In other words what they want is SIMPLICITY.  I'm
> not knocking that at all, but it is NOT the only way to fly.  The doublet
> with the most gain is something called a double extended zepp, is NOT
> resonant, needs a low loss balanced feedline and a tuner to feed it.
>
> Working wire solutions for most gain, best efficiency in a given space is
> a tricky science that involves modeling, and RARELY produces resonant
> solutions that feed with nothing except 50 ohm coax.  In critiquing one
> person's work, he had defeated himself by forcing the wires to produce a
> no-tuning-device 50 ohm feed.  When he dropped that requirement and got
> used to the idea of designing for results and matching it to coax
> afterward, he very quickly designed something that fit his back yard and
> worked well.
>
> In your case what screams at me is "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!"  and
> "Model it, and see what is going on."
>
> "Resonance" is way, way over-rated.
>
> 73, Guy K2AV
>
> On Thu, Jan 5, 2012 at 10:13 AM, Rick McClelland, AA5S <
> [hidden email]> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I'm a CW operator who dwells in the lower end of the HF bands.  My current
>> antenna is a 200' horizontal delta loop 40' high, fed with 87' of 450 ohm
>> ladder line.  This connects to a 4 to 1 balun (common mode choke?) which
>> is
>> attached to my Dentron Jr. Monitor tuner via 5' of RG213.  Looking at a
>> spreadsheet, I see that a full wave loop for 80 meters is 287' and 143.57'
>> for 40 meters.
>>
>> A hypothetical question to the wise ones on this list is would I expect
>> any
>> practical improvement in performance of my antenna system (on 40 meters
>> and
>> above) by reducing my 200' delta loop to 143.57' and feeding it with
>> 71.78'
>> of ladder line so that the sum of the antenna length plus twice the ladder
>> line length is 287'?   This seems to make theoretical sense since the
>> entire system would be resonant at 7mhz and integral multiples thereof.
>> However, the performance of my current 200' loop appears to be quite good
>> from 80 to 6 meters and my small tuner matches whatever impedance this
>> system is presenting to it so I'm hesitant to take a pair of snippers to
>> my
>> antenna.
>>
>> I would like to increase the length of the loop to 287' feet and feed it
>> with 71.78' of ladderline but that is another story.  Also, would I expect
>> to be able to tune any of the these three antennas on 160 meters if I were
>> to purchase either a KXAT100 or KAT500 tuner which presumably have a wider
>> tuning ranges than the Dentron Jr. Monitor tuner?
>>
>> Rick McClelland, AA5S
>> Fort Collins, CO
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>
>


--
Rick McClelland, AA5S
Fort Collins, CO
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