Right now I'm using an end fire array antenna that I also can use as a 52 ft. circumference loop. Given the very high SWR on the feedline, especially when running the loop on 40M and 80M, I recently swapped out the 18 feet of 450 ohm "window" ladder line between my tuner and the loop, and replaced it with a homemade ladder line made from 3/8" outside diameter copper refrigerator tubing. The spacing between centers of the tubing is 3/4 inch. I immediately noticed much stronger signals after doing the feedline swap. That had me wondering just how much loss I was experiencing with the ladder line, in comparison to my current feedline. I was thinking about how I could measure this. I thought about using the XG1, attaching it to a 10 ft. dipole made of insulated wire, then taping the dipole to the center of the loop opposite the feedline, using the XG1 to generate a weak signal onto the antenna. Then I would measure the signal strength at the K2 speaker output, going through the tuner,(after having first tuned up the antenna to 7.040 without the XG1 attached). Then I would repeat the same experiment with the different feedline and then compare the difference. One of my concerns would be the impact on the XG1 by hooking it up to a 10 ft. or so dipole, and the fact that it would not be transmitting into a 50 ohm load.
Is there an easier way to do this? The loop was doing fine with the ladder line, I used it for the ARCI Spring QSO Party, but I'd like to improve on it. Vic KG4HTT _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: [email protected] You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
