Center-fed antennas
Posted by
alorona on
Oct 10, 2019; 8:24pm
URL: http://elecraft.85.s1.nabble.com/KX2-Antenna-Curiosity-tp7655612p7655622.html
My experience with single vertical or sloping wires is exactly the same as AB7E's. I have, over almost twice as many Field Days as Dave, come to a similar conclusion, with the slight difference being my preference for an "all-band dipole" fed with balanced line. This obviates the balun and reduces feedline loss to negligible, so obviously I am maximizing efficiency at the expense of any other possible advantage. (I can usually hear much better than I can be heard... so thus far this has been a valid decision.)
To sum up what I and what I think Dave are saying, you can't beat a horizontal, center-fed wire up as high as you can get it. Its simplicity, the flexibility it gives you to QSY (with a good tuner), and its high efficiency are almost unbeatable.
As a side note, the center-fed horizontal wire I have used here at home is totally non-resonant. I don't even know how long it is. Once you give up the obsession with resonant antenna length, you gain a huge freedom of choice.
In the bottom of the sunspot cycle, these advantages are somewhat reduced because an op, especially on Field Day, might opt to forget about any band higher than 20 meters -- and these days even 20 is questionable. This means you can probably make do with coaxial cable and a balun for operation on 2 or 3 bands but the general idea still holds.
Al W6LX
>Yes, a center fed normal dipole with the middle (high current portion)
>higher off the ground (say 50 feet for 40m) and a common mode choke at
>the feedpoint would almost assuredly perform better.
>
>73,
>Dave AB7E
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