The G5RV may work well, but I doubt if it'd work "better". For most of my Ham "career" my mainstay antenna has been a doublet. That's a center fed wire as long as I can make it (seldom over 150 feet since and currently only about 50 feet) and as high as I can get it. It's fed with open wire line using a balanced tuner.
The efficiency is excellent, even down to the band where it's only 1/4 wavelength long overall. At that extreme it's about 1 dB below a full-size dipole. As always with a horizontal antenna, the big issue is height. For best DX it needs to be about 1/2 wavelength above the ground: easy on 20 meters where that's about 32 feet, a bit harder on 40 where it's 64 feet and pretty challenging for most ops on 80 where 1/2 wave off the ground means it needs to be 130 feet high! That's why many ops who want to chase DX on 80 go for a vertical. Less efficient on paper but still puts out more low angle radiation than most of us can manage from a low horizontal antenna. Of course, on those lower frequencies the horizontal is an excellent, high-performing short-skip or "NVIS" antenna providing excellent signals out to maybe 500 or even 1000 miles. My doublet at 30 feet has about 6 dB gain "straight up" on 40. I've worked a few Japanese and Europeans on it on 40, but most of my 40 meter contacts are in North America and my 80 meter contacts show very good signals out to 600 miles or so. On 30 and 20 it's a good DX performer that often gets me DX stations answering my CQ running my K2/100 on CW. I couldn't help but smile to see that Mike, ZL1MH reported to Kevin that I was one of the three stateside stations he could copy in New Zealand during the ECN last Sunday afternoon on 20 meters. The bottom line is that most of the "designs" that have become popular over the years are simply variations on either the basic doublet that I use or the basic "Marconi" antenna worked against ground. Some of them provide a somewhat easier range of impedances for the ATU to handle, and others, like the common center-fed 1/2 wave 'dipole' provide an easy match for cheap and easy-to-handle coaxial feed lines, albeit only on the bands where they are either 1/2 or 3/2 waves long. Ron AC7AC _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: Elecraft@mailman.qth.net 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
