On Nov 2, 9:02 pm, "Stefan Wolfe" wrote:


With just a few easy modifications you could change your 80 meter dipole
into a G5RV and cover nearly the whole ham band including 40m. Despite what
you may hear from some disparagers, G5RV is actually an excellent antenna.


How do you define excellent? Why would one need to change the length
of
the element, just to feed it on all bands using a tuner?
Of course, there are quite a few variations of the G5RV, but I've
never seen
on that I thought was excellent. The ones I used at field day two
years in a
row were totally pathetic. But of course, they used all the usual
garbage
between the rig and the antenna as they are usually sold.
Rig to tuner to coax to choke to twin lead to element.. What a
mess...
Too much loss with all that junk.
He would likely be better off keeping the same element length, and
feeding with nothing but twin lead from a tuner if one wanted to use
it on all bands.
But his current plan of separate dipoles feeding with coax is better
than either one as far as efficiency. He will also have pretty much
a dipole pattern for each band also. This is usually better when used
for lower band NVIS type paths, vs longer wires that have more gain
in
certain directions. If you have gain in certain directions, you will
lose
some in other directions. This is ok in some cases, but not so great
in
others. I'd rather have the broader pattern on the low bands for NVIS
use.
If I was Tim, I'd stick with what he has, and just get it tuned. Once
he does, he won't have to mess with it anymore, and it will outplay
most other types of multi-band setups. No tuner fiddling changing
bands either.
It will smoke the usual garden variety G5RV kits that are sold.
My experiences using the G5RV were so poor, I refuse to ever
use one again. I'll go back home and watch TV before I'd ever get
stuck on one of those again for 80/40m field day use.
It was horrible.. I felt like I was using a dummy load for an antenna.
No joke.. But like I say, these were the basic store bought G5RV's
including all the lossy junk. It's possible to dump most of that
junk and have a decent antenna, but I would still prefer the
parallel coax fed dipoles. For multi band use, I don't think they
can be beat for overall efficiency. I use nothing else here, and
have been going that route for years. But I am kind of anal about
unnecessary system losses.
MK