Cecil Moore wrote in
:

Andre & Sharon Walker wrote:
I was hoping to get away from traps, but i dont think its possible
:-(. I only have a smallish yard, with just 30m from the chimmny
(brick ) to the back of the yard, so i think a decent wire antenna is
out...but i am open to suggestions. I guess the other considerstion
is to keep "she inside" happy .

A 1/2WL dipole is 20m on 40m and can be made to work on
all HF bands 40m-10m. That's probably what I would do
and then do something romantic to keep the XYL happy.

Cecil, Andre will not have access to most HF bands, just 80, 40, 15, and
10m.

It takes about 6 hours to train and assess a Foundation Licencee, so your
tunerless concept is perhaps more complex than Andre's current knowledge
base.

For example, I worked a FL chap a couple of days ago on 40m with a 80m
half wave dipole fed with a long run of coax, and he was confident that
his antenna worked real well, despite my expectation that it was likely
that well less than 10% of his permitted 10W PEP was radiated. It was
impossible to tell this chap that if he cut the dipole to half the length
it would work better on 40m.

It is no good telling people that an antenna isn't likely to work real
good, they will cite all the contacts that they have had with it, and as
we know, anything "works", doesn't it. However, most people listen to the
positive suggestion that with change, and antenna will work better (and
in the above case, more than 10 times the EIRP).

Andre, keep it simple. A coax fed half wave dipole is easy to get going
will limited knowledge and experience, and you should have a high
confidence that you will be able to deliver a suitable load to your
transmitter (ie it will deliver its rated power), and the antenna will be
quite efficient (ie that most of your 10W PEP transmitter power is
radiated). It will also work well on receive.

If you hear strong FL signals around, they have good antennas, and / or
are flaunting the power limit. It is easy to do the latter, but if you
get the antenna right, you still have the room for improvement when you
upgrade to the higher power limit.

Owen