On Sat, 21 Apr 2012 22:59:10 -0700, "Sal" wrote:

Nothing small is going to be broadbanded. Roy, W7EL, a contributor here,
offered his wisdom on antennas and it's been echoed by others, I'm sure.

Small
Broadband Pick any two.
Efficient

Words to live by.
"Sal"

Thats a good rule of thumb. However, this is a receive only antenna,
which does not need to be perfectly matched and can be fairly
inefficient and low gain. Even so, I don't think the radiation
efficiency is going to be that horrible. They're mostly due to
conduction losses (at HF) and dielectric loss (at UHF). For the high
currents required for transmitting, these losses are fairly large for
a short broadband antenna. However, in a high impedance receive only
antenna, the conductivity loses are a much smaller part of the antenna
impedance than in the transmit antenna.

It's much the same in the discone. The antenna VSWR averages about
3:1 over about 6 octaves of frequency. With such a high VSWR, it's
not a suitable transmit antenna. However, for receive, it works
tolerably well.

--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558