"Wayne" wrote in message
...
Let's say I have a perfectly balanced dipole with a feedpoint impedance of
72+j0 at my frequency of interest.
I connect a perfect 72 ohm coax (an unbalanced connection) to the
feedpoint, and drive the antenna system with an unbalanced 72 ohm source.

Since the power sent to the antenna is not reflected, do I need a balun?

For simple dipoles baluns are just good for theory. As long as there is not
enough RF comming back into the shack to cause problems ,who cares where the
RF is going in most cases. If the antenna is perfect it will radiate in two
main directions and not too well in the other 2. For general ham usage it
is good to be able to radiate in all directions in many cases.