"CW" wrote in message ...
Mark, I agree with you on the dipole but expand on it a bit. Build a fan
dipole.

Thats basically what I have for 80m. But I think it's probably
overkill for just SWL receiving. I think it would be better to
parallel another smaller dipole at twice the frequency of the lower
one. That way you get a low Z feed on a band that would be a high Z
feed using the lower band dipole alone. That in turn gives you one
more 3/4 wave low Z resonance also. I use the fan dipole/turnstile for
a more omnidirectional pattern on 80m. I can also lengthen one leg,
and make it resonant at two points in the band if I want both phone
and cw. The swr curve becomes a W. But normally, I run them both tuned
to the same freq up in the phone band. The 40 dipole is on the same
feedline, so that antenna has six legs total. Four 60 ft legs, and two
32 ft legs. I run it on 160m as a top loaded vertical by shorting the
coax together down at the tuner. It works pretty well as the current
distribution is fairly constant up the 42 ft coax vertical section.
It's top loaded by mainly the four 60 ft wires, but the 40 legs help a
bit also I guess. It beats my 45 ft tall inv L most of the time.
Usually by appx 10 db on the avg meter. Been hanging out on 1.889.50 a
lot lately. We've been building up a pretty good regional group there.
Lots less qrm than 75m...We can talk all night on 160m and not have
any qrm or hecklers.. Can't always say that about 75. MK