Mike, I'm having very good results with a 136.5 foot OCF dipole (1/3-2/3) fed with 120 feet of 300 ohm ladder line to an Elecraft BL-2 balun and one foot of coax to the K3. The SWR at the radio is less than 1.8 and as low as 1.2 across all of 80, 40, 20, 17, 12, 2/3 of 10 and even the first 1/4 of 6 meters. I can send you the detail results measured with an Array Solutions AIM 4170 if you like. This approach keeps the SWR on the ladder line very low (less than 3:1) on these bands and makes tuner loses very low as well. Total loss out to the antenna is less than 1 dB. Plus it works on all the other bands including 160 with SWR's within the range of the K3 tuner, though with greater loss.
The length of the Ladder line is definitely a factor and I found that modeling and theory don't always match reality. In this case it turned out that 120 feet was close to ideal; 100 feet was OK but not as good. I also found out that running the ladder line inside, though ceiling and walls, made almost no measurable difference and you avoid the higher loss of coax. BTW, I did the modeling work on EZNEC and then used TLW to figure out transmission line and tuner losses. And the good news is that the real world results were even better than the model! ----- Chuck, AE4CW -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/K3-Multi-Band-antenna-thoughts-tp15996954p15997775.html Sent from the Elecraft mailing list archive at Nabble.com. _______________________________________________ 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
