Yes, I've been using 450 line for years. I've switched back and forth from this to coax many times. The very best all purpose antenna that I've ever had is the one I now use. A 135' long doublet, up 45 feet, center fed with 75' of 450 ladder. That is terminated to a k-watt quality 1:1 balun, and then to an SGC-237 auto-tuner. >From there, 40' of coax to the rig.
This setup gives me operation on 160 and up with an average 1:8 SWR. On hot sunny day, snow blizzard or rain down-poor. Yes, the ladder Z characteristics do change with a heavy rain. But the auto-tuner compensates instantly. The advantage to this setup is the coax is always being used for what it is designed for....unbalanced 50 ohms. And so RF loss due to mis-match is minimized. I am one very happy camper with this config! I think its true, a multi-band antenna is a compromised antenna. And I think the multi-band wire antenna is where ladder-line shines. It aint pretty like coax though ;^D Duane N1BBR -- [email protected] ______________________________________________________________ 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
