Hello all,
I presently have an 80m dipole fed with about 50 feet of coax. I also
have a 40m dipole fed with 50 feet of coax at the same height. If I
was to replace the coax on the 80m dipole with open wire feeder and
used it on 40m, would it have more gain than the coax fed 40m dipole?
Also, would it receive better?
Cheers.

On Dec 27, 8:26*pm, wrote:
Hello all,
*I presently have an 80m dipole fed with about 50 feet of coax. I also
have a 40m dipole fed with 50 feet of coax at the same height. If I
was to replace the coax on the 80m dipole with open wire feeder and
used it on 40m, would it have more gain than the coax fed 40m dipole?
Also, would it receive better?
Cheers.

In theory the full wave should be good for a couple of extra DB
broadside. So yes, you would have a little gain broadside to the
wire. But you would have less gain in the other directions.
Receiving would be reciprocal. Gain broadside, less gain in the
other directions.
Whether it's any better is up to the directions you are working
at the time. Could be slightly better. Could be slightly worse..
There is no free lunch.
If it were me.. I'd stick with what you have unless you have a real
need for gain broadside to the wire. Also, 2 DB is barely a 1/2
S unit on the average receiver. Just barely worth the trouble.
I have used extended dipoles at times, but I prefer the EDZ over
the full wave dipole. IE: .64 wave per leg, instead of .50 wave per
leg. You will show appx 3 db gain broadside over the dipole with
the EDZ. Even 3 db is not earthshaking, but it is an effective
doubling of power in the two directions broadside to the wire.
You have to decide if more gain broadside is worth less gain
in the other directions.
On the low bands like 80/40, I prefer to be fairly omnidirectional
as the people I work are usually in all directions.
Also, a 1/2 wave dipole fed with coax is one of the most efficient
systems you can use.
If I run anything else, it would usually be a turnstile. That's what
I've been using on 80m the past few years. But I'm just running
a regular dipole on 40m.

On Dec 27, 9:26*pm, wrote:
Hello all,
*I presently have an 80m dipole fed with about 50 feet of coax. I also
have a 40m dipole fed with 50 feet of coax at the same height. If I
was to replace the coax on the 80m dipole with open wire feeder and
used it on 40m, would it have more gain than the coax fed 40m dipole?
Also, would it receive better?

The gain would be different, but that's because the pattern would
change, you would have more gain broadside but at the expense of less
gain elsewhere in the pattern.

You would very definitely need a tuner, but that's not a disadvantage.

I am a strong strong proponent of the "all band doublet", with a tuner
what you describe would be a useful antenna on all ham bands shorter
than 80M. And with a little cleverness (tie the two conductors
together and feed it like a vertical against ground with a tuner) it
will be usable on 160M too.

Tim N3QE