How about the stripped back coax-coax? That's where you peel the outer
conductur back, exposing 19" of the inner conductor, and the 19" piece of
peeled back outer sleeve is the opposing radiator, and the feedline just
continues in a straight line out of the peeled back part. Then you tie or
tape the top to a hook and simply hang it. This avoids the entire issue of
making the feedline approach the feedpoint at a 90 degree angle. What's
your take on this design? I like its simplicity.
A simple "sleeve" dipole. They can certainly work. I suspect that
tuning them can be a bit tricky - the velocity-of-propagation on the
upper, exposed-center-conductor portion is likely to be a bit
different than the velocity down the folded-back braid section.
They're probably a bit prone to RF on the feedline due to coupling
between the end of the folded-back braid, and the braid inside it.
Weather is another issue - rainwater will get into the braid quite easily
and will run back down the coax into your station. [Trust me on
this... I once failed to adequately RTV-waterproof the RG-8X coax at
the feedpoint of a copper-pipe J-pole, my SWR went sky-high after the
first big rain, and I found water and moss (!) inside my N connector.]
Commercial sleeve dipoles are often built of a copper pipe of two or
more diameters, and sometimes have an additional decoupling sleeve
down below the lower radiator section.
A stripped-back-coax sleeve dipole could make a very handy emergency
field antenna, but I don't think I'd depend on it for base-station use.
--
Dave Platt AE6EO
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