On Mar 5, 9:18 am, John Passaneau wrote:

We have used OFC dipoles here for a few years at field day. They fill a
very specific set of needs for us. 1) They are simple to put up
2) The feed line coming from one end of the dipole is shorter than from
center feed dipoles in our setup. 3) OFC dipoles offer an impedance at
the end of the coax that is within the range of the tuners built into
our radios on the bands that are important to field day. This simplifies
our setup and operation. 4) They work as well as an antenna of that
physical length on any one frequency would no mater how it's feed.

The radiation pattern from an OFC is set by the length of the wire not
where RF is feed in/out of the antenna. In our setup open wire line and
tuners would be a pain in the butt, and an operational inconvenience
that gains us nothing. Fan dipoles or separate dipoles are hard to setup
and or tune and would perform no better for us. The antennas we use were
built by myself and use a 4:1 current balun which minimize feed line
radiation. On 80/40/20m we can easily match the antenna with the built
in tuners so the SWR must be under 3:1. OFC dipoles don't work well on
15m but with the current sun spot cycle not a problem. We see no
indication of common mode current problems, so we don't worry about it,
we just operate and have fun.

John W3JXP



Sounds fine... Just as long as I don't have to use it.. Myself, I
prefer either
separate, or fan dipoles on the low bands.. 20-10, a tribander.. "A4S"
I never use a tuner. All coax fed too... To each his own I say...
MK