Thread: Wire antenna
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Old August 22nd 04, 01:43 AM
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I have been using antenna's fed with ladder line recently and I have had a
lot of success.
You will need to get a different tuner, a tuner that accepts balanced line
such as ladder line. There are some good ones out there but they arent exactly
cheap.
I am using the MFJ-986.
(this tuner also accepts coax as well)...
With the ladder line and tuner you do not need to worry about SWR or the coax
loss with high swr.

You can try this antenna with your coax and your tuner right now and it
might work better.

You could put up something like a 40 meter 1/2 wave sloper. Just a wire
about 65' long (468/freq in mhz), going from your support at 33' down to your
lower support. Then just use an egg insulator and connect one end of the coax
to one side and the braid of the coax to the other side (or the ladder line
like this).
Make sure the connections are soldered good.
This antenna should work very well on 40 meters and with your current tuner
it should work okay for 80 meters. At least stateside if the tuner can handle
it.

The ladder line would tune this fine with a different tuner.

But this would be a fine dipole on 40m and other bands with the tuner. its
worth a try I think.

Another antenna I have used on 80 and other bands is a 1/4 wave inverted L.
Yours would be a little short and sloping, but take a wire up your 33'
support and then down to your lower support. This would be almost 100' about
23' short of a 1/4 wave on 80m but the tuner will help.
Connect the center wire of your coax to this wire and the braid of the coax
to a ground rod and a radial system. You will need to lay down some radials in
your yard for this antenna. Whether it was fed with coax or ladder line. But
either feedline with a tuner should work pretty good on 80M.

73
Craig
N0BSA


I have installed a inverted V wire antenna. I have it connected with a
1:1 balun at 30 feet from the ground. The center wire is 66 ft 6 in
long. The end is 8 feet from ground. The other leg is 28 ft long and
attached to the roof of my house (appox 20 feet). I am getting started
in MARS and need to transmit around 3.350 MHZ. What can I do to this
antenna to tx around that freq ? Right now the antenna works from 40
meters to 6 meters with my MFJ 945 tuner. I was thinking I could make a
wire trap for it. Thanks for any ideas.
"73"
Tim