On Feb 22, 11:28*am, Joe from Kokomo wrote:
On 2/22/11 07:55 , Joe from Kokomo wrote:

On 2/21/11 15:11 , Joe from Kokomo wrote:

On 2/22/2011 2:41 AM, D Peter Maus wrote:

{stipulated}...

Just out of idle curiosity, what kind of antenna system do you use?

Just an idle answer...

I have a 130 foot long, 25-30 foot high, bent dipole between two
trees, fed with ladder line, used on 80-10 (including WARC bands)
with a Johnson KW Matchbox balanced tuner. On 160 meters, I
reconfigure the antenna to what is essentially a top loaded
vertical, using a T-match tuner.

Obviously not as good as a tower and beam, but I work lots o' DX
with it, for example the VK0IR (Heard Island) dx'pedition and North
Korea. (If you are not a ham, trust me, these are nice catches).
Needless to say, it also works nicely for SWL'ing with my vintage
receivers.

A tower would be nice, but not worth the hassle of dealing with the
(overly) strict city and subdivision restrictions.

On 2/22/2011 9:06 AM, D. Peter Maus wrote:

I was speaking with a ham buddy of mine, over the weekend, and he
recommended such an antenna for low noise and great digging in crowded
bands. And particularly for MW Dx. I'm tempted to do it here.

Well, it won't hurt to try it...

Your buddy says it is a quiet antenna. Compared to what? It is commonly
acknowledged that noise is more vertically polarized and thus a vertical
antenna is a bit noisier than a horizontal antenna like a dipole. I
really don't think the dipole I described is any quieter than any other
dipole AFAIK.

The reason I used the antenna was mostly because of its benefits when
transmitting. With the tuner and the ladder line feed, it will operate
on many bands with relatively low line loss. For SWL'ing, I'm not sure
if it would have any particular benefit.

Which vintage receivers are you using?

I've had many over the years, from an R-390 on down,

- but now that I am at the Gateway to Geezerdom,

You Are : 100 + 10 & 1 ! ;;-}}
-we-should-all-live-so-long-