When Varney created his G5RV in 1946 a great many Hams still operated on but one Ham band and parallel (open wire) transmission lines were still common. The 102-foot G5RV is a 1-1/2 wave center fed doublet at 14.15 MHz. According to one of my favorite wire antenna writers, (John Heys, G3BDQ "Practical Wire Antennas"), the original G5RV was fed with a matching section of 34 feet (10.36 meters) followed by any length of 75-ohm "transmitting" twin lead (yes, 75 ohm twin lead was readily available in the late 40's and 50's).
In the years following WWII there was proliferation of kits and commercial Ham transmitters (compared to almost none pre war) and most of those were "multi-band" types, typically covering 80,40,20 and 10 meters (no 30 or 15 meter bands in those days). Hams started trying to use their G5RV on other bands. Also the masses of very cheap "war surplus" coax and the need for TVI suppression started driving Hams away from open wire line. Varney updated the design to try to accommodate multiband operation and coax feed in the July, 1984 issue of "Radio Communication" (the RSGB magazine). In the yearss since the G5RV has acquired a "mystical patina" as a wave-launching wire, along with other oddities such as the W3EDP. 73, Ron AC7AC ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html Message delivered to arch...@mail-archive.com
