In article , ml wrote:

If I only have room for a short dipole, say 40 feet, and use a tuner such
as the SGC or Icom AH-4, what is the penalty in DB for the lower bands
(160, 75, 60, 40) compared to a half wave on each band?

73,
Fred
K4DII

just a fyi, this really belongs in a new thread

ML-

Perhaps you are right. I was attempting to ask the same question in
reverse: The "penalty" is the opposite of the possible improvement.

So far I've learned that the majority of loss is in the matching network.
Actual gain of a shortened dipole is only about a half dB down, but
radiation resistance is so low that I-squared-R losses in the tuner are
significant.

Someone mentioned that you could reduce losses in the tuner by adding
external loading coils. It seems to me that you would just be moving the
loss out of the tuner into the loading coils.

The question of whether an order of magnitude of improvement can be
attained appears to be answered. If you define that as ten dB of
improvement, then probably not. The total penalty is most likely less
than that.

73,
Fred
K4DII