On Mar 7, 7:16 pm, Mike Coslo wrote:


If you have found such a *drastic* difference however, perhaps
there was something wrong with your particular antenna or setup?

- 73 de Mike KB3EIA -

Wasn't mine..It was one they were using at a field day. As far as I
could
tell, it was a regular ole carolina windom, fed with their feedline. I
can't
remember if he had a tuner inline.
It was a dud though compared to a standard coax fed dipole.
A good 2 s units down on *everything*. "40m" Noise, desired signals,
the
whole ball of wax. Obvious feeder loss... Sure, you can make contacts
with such a device, but it's not for me.. Two S units difference is
about the equal of adding an average amplifier to a 100 watt radio.
I'm used to coax fed dipoles where the appx system efficiency is in
the
mid/upper 90's % range.. So almost any other compromise antenna is
going
to be inferior as far as total system loss. The main problem with the
carolina
windom I tried was the goofy feeder system with coax, choke, twin
lead,
etc... What a cluster%$#@ of engineering that is... :
If I'm going to use a compromise one wire/all band antenna, it's going
to be
fed with ladder line the whole way to a tuner which will be carefully
tuned using the least inductance possible. It will also be center fed.
Even that will be inferior to my usual coax fed... I've compared..
But usually my preferred multi band antenna will be paralled dipoles,
with the
legs spread apart as far as possible.. Fed with a single coax feed.
Thats what I use here at home. No loss in system efficiency compared
to many other multi band designs.
MK