On 10/25/2019 2:01 PM, Bob McGraw K4TAX wrote:
Except for my 6M yagi, all of my antennas are non-resonant antennas. My favorite is the 256 ft center fed wire {resonant at 1.825 MHz} with a balanced feed.
Dean Straw, N6BV, retired editor of the ARRL Antenna Book and Antenna Compendiums, is a very smart engineer and a very good friend. But his promotion of this sort of antenna is probably the greatest error of his time in that job, an idea whose time is LONG past, for many reasons. Primary -- 1) it cannot be choked to kill noise on RX, and 99.9% of hams live surrounded by local noise and 2) it's pattern is different on every frequency.
I am a strong believer in resonant antennas for each band, if if the must be multi-band antennas like fan dipoles to fit in the available space. For example, a 20/15/10 fan fits in 33 ft and works great, with a predictable pattern on each band. An 80/40 fan works on 15M, with a predictable pattern on both 80 and 40. Hypower Antenna company sells loaded antennas that are resonant on 80 and 40 and fit into about 100 ft; I used one in Chicago on 30 to great effect. All of these antennas are fed with 50 or 75 ohm coax, and CAN be choked to kill RX noise.
RX noise is a VERY big deal -- if you can't hear 'em, you can't work 'em. If you haven't worked to minimize your RX noise, you're DXing with one hand tied behind your back! My friend AG6EE goes to remote locations in NV, OR, and CA to light up rare grids with 1kW on 6M. Folks trying to work him complain of one-way propagation because he hears them really well and the don't hear him, but the REAL problem is their local RX noise.
http://k9yc.com/KillingReceiveNoise.pdf Text, NCJ article http://k9yc.com/KillingRXNoiseVisalia.pdf Slides Visalia talk 73, Jim K9YC ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[email protected] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html Message delivered to [email protected]
