Owen Duffy wrote:
Roy Lewallen wrote in
treetonline:

When trying to understand off center fed antennas, it's important to
realize a few key facts:
...

Yes, I thing you are quite correct Roy.

The advertising hype that goes along with many of these commercially
popularised antennas gives the impression that deployment of multi-band
wire antennas for the lower HF bands is a very standardised thing, a no-
brainer. One buys the product, installs it in their own environment in
their own way, and it just "works" out of the box... whatever "works"
means.

The real world doesn't work that simply.

But to a buyer with faith in the promotional claims, they can buy a lot
of satisfaction for only $69.99 or whatever, and not have any untidy left
over materials to clutter up their home, or residual technical issues to
clutter up their mind.

Today, the growth opportunity in the US is selling attic antennas for low
HF bands to new hams. Not as popular here because restrictive covenants
on residential properties aren't as common.

But, hey, a simple wire antenna with published performance figures from
160m to 2m is attractive to *our* new six hour hams. Which antenna is
that? The W5GI Mystery Antenna, you know, the one "that performs
exceptionally well even though it confounds antenna modeling software".

With all respect, Owen - a Ham can be just as ignorant if they tested
in the days when we had to mine and smelt our own copper for antennas.

There is plenty of ignorance to go around.

Before I go too much further, Hams should build their own wire
antennas. No excuses.

The interesting thing is that most of these novel antennas work to some
extent. I know a fellow in PA who was excited that he could work Maine
on 40 meters with a really bad antenna setup. He just didn't know what
to expect. (from where I'm at, 100 watts and a modest dipole should just
about ruin an S-meter between those two places)

That is how antenna BS starts. This guy would think that a poor antenna
is great because it performs better than his awful antenna.. 8^)

I won't come out and condemn things like OCF dipoles though, because
they are an interesting and cool novelty, and by gosh, I had fun
building, testing, and using mine. I learned a lot. Used one during
Field day, and ran and held frequencies at 100 watts on 80 meters.
Totally subjective of course, but low power stations usually don't do that.

One of the things I learned was that it is a real compromise. Higher
band performance wasn't so hot. But I'm a lot better off having built
it, and finding out it's capabilities and shortcomings, than just
believing that it is a bad antenna because I've been told it was so. I
know exactly what the antenna is like, and it only took me a few hours
of work, and a couple months of testing to find out.

I note this mainly because I am one of the unwashed new Hams - and we
aren't all as you describe.

- 73 de Mike N3LI -