Keith KD1E asked: I just picked up a dipole fed with ladder line. Plan to use it for FD. The antenna has 100 feet of parallel feed (window ladder line) and there is no way I'll need that much. I don't want to cut the feed line because next time I use the temporary antenna I may need more. So what do I do with the excess? If it was coax, I'd just pile it up on the ground. Maybe I should park the Element further away so I can stretch the feed line out straight from the rig to the antenna. I could maybe use tomb stones to hold the feed line off the ground ... :-)
---------------------- That sounds like a "doublet" or "center fed" antenna intended for use with a tuner for multi-band operation. (It's a "dipole" only on the frequency where it's 1/2 wavelength long.) A good rule of thumb is to *never* use more feedline of any type than you need for the job. In some cases (as in when the feedline is low-loss and well matched) it doesn't make a huge difference whether you have 50 feet or 200 feet of line, so smart operators don't chop coax up, especially for temporarily installations. However, open wire line or window line is unaffected by neatly-done and soldered splices. There's really no reason not to cut that stuff to length, then simply splice the rest back on later if needed. The one situation where you might want to use (or splice back on) a little more feeder than is needed to reach the rig is if your antenna tuner won't handle the impedance it presents on some frequencies. In that case, don't bunch up the extra feed line. Run it wherever there's room so there's 2 or 3 times the width of the feeder from other objects. Ron AC7AC _______________________________________________ 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
