Spam Collector wrote:
Evidently the reason
I couldn't find much information on 'oversized' antennas is that
they aren't very effective.

My 130 ft. dipole is 'oversized' on 10m and has a
gain of 10.6 dBi at a take off angle of 12 degrees.
--
73, Cecil http://www.w5dxp.com

On 08 May 2007 17:47:27 GMT, Spam Collector
wrote:

On 2007-05-04, Owen Duffy wrote:

Efficient and effective multi-band antennas don't happen by accident,
they are a significant challenge, and an efficient and effective 160m to
70cm is an extreme challenge. On the other hand, you will see proof that
"loading up the fencewire works", but it goes to the meaning of 'works',
which is less specific than 'effective and efficient'.

Thanks to all for the insightful replies. Evidently the reason
I couldn't find much information on 'oversized' antennas is that
they aren't very effective. Then again, if you never experiment
with unconventional ideas you'll never discover anything new, so
I may just try it and see what happens. If all else fails I can
always make several smaller narrowband antennas out of the wire.

Thanks again,
Frank
KE5MJZ
I put about 2000 feet of wire in the grass this winter for radials.
There is always another use for extra wire...
John Ferrell W8CCW
"Life is easier if you learn to
plow around the stumps"

wrote in
:

....
The rule still holds, for a bigger signal put up more metal.

An appealing rule, isn't it!

I had three QSOs with stations on Saturday on 40m that were using an "80m
coax centre fed dipole". I explained to them that if they halved the size
of their antenna, it would work ten times as good.

This simple case shows that the "rule" ain't a rule.

Owen

wrote:

Wrong, it just means you didn't read the whole posting. The issue
with a doublet of two full half waves is feed impedence is very high
and a very poor match for coax. Feed it properly (voltage feed) and
it will perform better than a 40m dipole. . .

A full wave dipole has less than 2 dB more gain than a half wave dipole
at its best angle. It has gain equal to or more than that of a half wave
dipole over only 88 of the 360 degrees of coverage -- at all other
angles the full wave dipole has less gain. In fact, over 140 of the
total 360 degrees, the gain of a full wave dipole is more than 10 dB
less than that of a half wave dipole.

So in what way does the full wave dipole "perform better" than a half
wave dipole?

Roy Lewallen, W7EL

Roy Lewallen wrote:
So in what way does the full wave dipole "perform better" than a half
wave dipole?

My 20m rotatable dipole gives ~2dB gain on 10m according
to EZNEC.
--
73, Cecil http://www.w5dxp.com

Roy Lewallen wrote in
:

wrote:

Wrong, it just means you didn't read the whole posting. The issue
with a doublet of two full half waves is feed impedence is very high
and a very poor match for coax. Feed it properly (voltage feed) and
it will perform better than a 40m dipole. . .

A full wave dipole has less than 2 dB more gain than a half wave dipole
at its best angle. It has gain equal to or more than that of a half
wave
dipole over only 88 of the 360 degrees of coverage -- at all other
angles the full wave dipole has less gain. In fact, over 140 of the
total 360 degrees, the gain of a full wave dipole is more than 10 dB
less than that of a half wave dipole.

So in what way does the full wave dipole "perform better" than a half
wave dipole?

Roy,

We have had discussions about characterising baluns, and I understand the
complexity... however, let me try a rough analysis.

Following the discussion with one of the chaps I mentioned in the earlier
posting, he was using a full wave dipole, a RAK BL-50A balun and 25m of
foam RG58 (cellular) feedline, I have had a rough attempt at
characterising the balun (I have one) at 7MHz. It is a 1:1 voltage balun,
and o/c it appears to look like 3000 ohms resistance in shunt with 10uH
of inductance with very low applied voltage (at 7MHz).

This balun is rated at 1kW CW in 50 ohms, so the rated primary voltage
would be 223V RMS. If the apparent shunt resistance remained constant
(and it doesn't if flux is high... but flux should be kept low to avoid
excessive core loss / temperature), the core loss would be 16W. The
package could probably dissipate 40W of core and copper loss, so 16W+ for
core loss seems consistent with package size, so maybe 3000 ohms is about
right, possibly as low as half of that at full operating flux.

So, in the case of a full wave dipole low over ground, the modelled
feedpoint impedance is around 4200+j0 ohms. If this is shunted by
something in the range 1500 to 3000 ohms of core loss resistance,
efficiency ranges from 35% to 58%, and the antenna can absorb a max of
223^2/4200 or 12W before overheating the balun (perhaps a little more
since there is almost zero copper loss).

Then the feedline will have an efficiency from 20% to 10% due to the high
VSWR.

So this "more metal" antenna system, looks like it has some small
increase in directivity (1.6 from your posting), an efficiency of 7% to
6%, quite low gain (directivity * efficiency = -10dB compared to a
lossless half wave dipole+feed), a maximum input RF power rating of 50W
to 100W for a radiated power of around 12W. The EIRP is much lower
(almost 10dB lower) than a 100W transmitter feeding the same antenna of
half the length.

Gee, that all looks pretty complicated, no wonder people find "rules"
like "bigger is better" so appealing, it saves all that thinking and
understanding... but wait a minute, isn't that was ham radio was about?

73
Owen

PS: I am thinking about trying to characterise the balun at 223V applied,
I will see how time goes today.

On Wed, 09 May 2007 13:11:01 -0700, Roy Lewallen
wrote:

wrote:

Wrong, it just means you didn't read the whole posting. The issue
with a doublet of two full half waves is feed impedence is very high
and a very poor match for coax. Feed it properly (voltage feed) and
it will perform better than a 40m dipole. . .

A full wave dipole has less than 2 dB more gain than a half wave dipole
at its best angle. It has gain equal to or more than that of a half wave
dipole over only 88 of the 360 degrees of coverage -- at all other
angles the full wave dipole has less gain. In fact, over 140 of the
total 360 degrees, the gain of a full wave dipole is more than 10 dB
less than that of a half wave dipole.

So in what way does the full wave dipole "perform better" than a half
wave dipole?

Roy Lewallen, W7EL
In the direction the lobe points. In general for an omnidirectional
antenna, it isn't as good.
--
73 for now
Buck, N4PGW

www.lumpuckeroo.com

"Small - broadband - efficient: pick any two."