Has anybody given any thought to what an antenna tuner of any kind
adds to your enjoyment in ham life. I have the MFJ 3kw tuner
with the roller inductor and differential capacitor and what a
charmer it is. I dont worry about my inverted dipoles mostly
Vertical polarized. I just crank up on any freqcy between
1.6 and 30 mhz and dont give a dam about gain or lack of same.
It just makes life so ez to do it that way. Why you ask.
Because it protects the ic751's output stages. Think of the
tuner as a RF SUCKER, it just sucks all the dangerous stuff
out of the rig and puts it in the tuner. How much of that
power gets finally radiated I could care less. I work
mostly on MARS freqcys and none of them are inside the ham bands
so this tuner serves me well.
Joe/KH6JF/ABM6JF


************************************************** **
* Ham KH6JF AARS/MARS ABM6JF QCWA WW2 VET WD RADIO *
************************************************** **


On Thu, 8 Apr 2004, Reg Edwards wrote:

Richard Clark,

I fully support your "All antennas have zero gain" campaign.

Why not join the "There's no such thing as an SWR meter" campaign?
----
Reg, G4FGQ

On Thu, 8 Apr 2004 20:03:15 +0000 (UTC), "Reg Edwards"
wrote:

Richard Clark,

I fully support your "All antennas have zero gain" campaign.

Why not join the "There's no such thing as an SWR meter" campaign?
----
Reg, G4FGQ

Hi Reg,

Because all mine have lines through them.

73's
Richard Clark, KB7QHC

On Thu, 8 Apr 2004 11:36:45 -1000, Joseph Fenn wrote:
I just crank up on any freqcy between
1.6 and 30 mhz and dont give a dam about gain or lack of same.
It just makes life so ez to do it that way.

Hi Joe,

That's the best advice we can offer:
Don't worry 'bout the things you can't change.

73's
Richard Clark, KB7QHC

Has anybody given any thought to what an antenna tuner of any kind
adds to your enjoyment in ham life.

Joseph, You bet, just search the archives of this group. Tuner or not,
resonant or non-resonant you will find many informative and entertaining
discussions. You should find that a bunch of folks have thought about tuners
and their benefit.


73 Gary N4AST

Someone said:

"There is no gain in any antenna. "
=========================

This is absolute BS. All u hv to do is read the catalogs fm Cushcraft, MFJ,
HyGain, etc. ALL of their antennas have gain! (Except the ones which don't.)

73 e Jack, K9CUN

Reg Edwards wrote:

Richard Clark,

I fully support your "All antennas have zero gain" campaign.

IMO applying the word 'Gain' to an antenna is misuse of the word 'gain'.

Beam forming antennas do concentrate the RF energy into an angle less
than 2*Pi steradians [Hemisphere] but the total energy concentrated is
still the power applied to the antenna minus losses. The far field from
a beam forming antenna is more intense than from an isotropic antenna.

Maybe the better term is to quote the solid angle at the 1/2 power
points in the E and H plane as a figure of merit. Example: antenna A has
a 1/2 power beam width of 2500 square degrees while antenna B has a 1/2
power beam width of 1800 square degrees.


Why not join the "There's no such thing as an SWR meter" campaign?
----
Reg, G4FGQ



Ah! But there are techniques for measuring TRUE VSWR!! [Not my little
Daiwa 101C or even the trusty Bird.]

Nope, I used to measure TRUE VSWR [in 1958] using a General Radio
Slotted Line with moveable probe!! I've forgotten the plotting details
but the answer came from plotting the response over 1/4 wavelength on a
SMITH Chart. Ain't cheap but it was accurate.

Seriously, I wonder if any readers recall the details of measuring and
plotting based on the GR Slotted Line?

Next question: where do I get a 160 meter 1/2 wavelength 50 ohm slotted
line?

Dave Shrader wrote:
IMO applying the word 'Gain' to an antenna is misuse of the word 'gain'.

Maybe, but I'll bet it's a losing cause. :-)

Next question: where do I get a 160 meter 1/2 wavelength 50 ohm slotted
line?

I've made slots in RG-213 with an Exacto knife. How much spare time
do you have?
--
73, Cecil, W5DXP



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On Fri, 09 Apr 2004 09:02:21 -0700, Bill Turner
wrote:

On Thu, 08 Apr 2004 18:35:22 GMT, Richard Clark
wrote:

All simply an argument for engineering through democratic vote.

_________________________________________________ ________

Not at all. They are arguments for using common language. Your attempt
to redefine antenna gain - a term in use for decades - clouds an issue
which is actually straightforward. Naughty boy!

C'mon Bill,

Redefine antenna gain? Where? I simply removed the option of calling
it absolute gain that is more in the province of active amplifiers not
passive lenses. The thread is already 28 posts too long - it isn't
rocket surgery.

73's
Richard Clark, KB7QHC

In article fxzdc.143$cD2.12959@attbi_s51,
Dave Shrader wrote:

IMO applying the word 'Gain' to an antenna is misuse of the word 'gain'.

Since this particular terminology has been used in this way in both
amateur and professional antenna literature for more decades than I've
been alive (I'm pushing 50) I think you're tilting at windmills to try
to eliminate it, or to declare it "misuse".

I personally prefer to refer to what an antenna delivers as
"directional gain", to distinguish it from the sort of "more RF out
than RF in" power gain that an amplifier delivers. From the point of
view of someone trying to deliver a specified amount of power to a
receiver in a specified direction, the two types of "gain" can be
interchanged to a large degree.

Yes, they're distinct, and we need to remember the distinctions, but
they can be traded-off against one another in many common sorts of
calculations.

[At the risk of re-opening a topic of contention, I'll posit that the
use of the term "gain" to refer to both amplifier power gain and to
antenna directional gain is somewhat similar in spirit to the use of
the term "resistance" to refer to both dissipative and nondissipative
impedances. Each is a single term, referring to two different
phenomena which can under many circumstances behave in ways which can
look equivalent from a particular point of view.]

Next question: where do I get a 160 meter 1/2 wavelength 50 ohm slotted
line?

Go down to your nearest abandoned rust-belt factory that has a large
brick or concrete chimney, wrap the chimney with sheet tin (leaving a
slot), and drop a suitable-sized silver-plated cast-iron sewer pipe
down the center. Run your probe up and down the chimney on a huge
pulley.

It'll probably be tricky to couple this to the antenna and feedline,
though. I don't think even Andrews makes a heliax connector quite
this large.

grin

--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Hosting the Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!

Bill Turner wrote:

SNIP

Not at all. They are arguments for using common language. Your attempt
to redefine antenna gain - a term in use for decades - clouds an issue
which is actually straightforward. Naughty boy!

--
Bill, W6WRT
QSLs via LoTW


Hold on Bill!! I posit a 6 element long john yagi in free space with
1500 watts at the feedpoint.

If I assume 100% efficiency, no losses in the antenna and antenna
materials, and then calculate the power in the surface of the resulting
pattern do I not get 1500 watts?? That's 0 dB gain!!!

This is common language and correct Physics.

THE ANTENNA HAS NO GAIN !!!!!!!

Now, for the sake of accuracy the antenna PATTERN will have a different
pattern from a dipole or an isotropic antenna. The antenna pattern
yields a field intensity that is greater than the reference antenna's
pattern.

So, the correct gain terminology must speak in terms of resulting
PATTERN not the antenna.

'Antenna gain' is both loose and incorrect language notwithstanding
advertising and marketing claims. 'Antenna Pattern Gain' or 'Directional
Gain' is correct language.