On Sat, 10 Feb 2007 18:50:54 +0000, Bob wrote:

If you
try to feed a mono band dipole with coax and an LDG tuner it will
probably have more loss on some bands than a T2FD

Good morning, Bob.

That's true, and that's why I wouldn't do that ... as you noted later, I'd
use ladder line and a balun.

What's worse, an antenna that will not reliably tune where you need it
or an antenna that will always work with some loss?

I don't know, depends on WHERE and to what extent the cut dipole would
fail to reliably tune. Anyway, that should be handled in the design of
the antenna, which of course needs to be done by somebody that knows what
he/she is doing. I assume that the fire department that is the subject of
this thread knows what frequency range(s) they need the HF station to
cover. Design the antenna and autotumer combination so that it tunes
efficiently across those frequency ranges

You have to consider
the user in this case as someone who may not have the experience to
diddle with tuners

That's why I suggest an autotuner.

or recognize when something is not working properly.

That's an issue with any installation. You could have any antenna you can
imagine, and something could go wrong making it "not work properly".
There needs to be someone around who has the skills and experience to
recognize that.

If it were up to me
to set up a fire station for regional comms, I would consider the 180ft
B&W, a simple to use HF rig and a solid state 500w amp which will make
up for the 5-6dB loss of the antenna over a dipole when necessary.

What if your emergency installation has to operate for extended periods of
time on emergency power and you need to conserve power? That power-hungry
500-watt amplifier may not be especially welcome in that case.

Anyway, I could put up at least three (or more) cut dipoles with ladder
line and autotuners for the price of that amplifier.

Also, 1000's of B&W T2FD type antennas in use right now working just
fine in military and government use for there intended purpose, which is
push the button and get the message through without messing around.

They are working, somewhat, for the most part. I would argue whether
they're working "just fine". They're doing the job because (a) the people
that installed and use them don't know the difference; and/or (b) they
have plenty of your tax dollars to spend on higher-power transmitters to
compensate for the antenna inefficiency; and/or (c) they're operating ALE
installations that jump around all over the spectrum and, really, the T2FD
antennas are all they can use so they have to suck it up and live with the
loss.