Cecil Moore wrote in message ...
Reg Edwards wrote:

The moral is - DON'T USE A G5RV.

Specially one with any coax in the feedline.

If you've bought one, you've been robbed.

It's a pretty good antenna for 80m, 40m, & 20m. My web page shows
how the "matching section" gives a pretty good match to coax on
80m and 40m. Mine also worked well on 12m.

I guess if a 2 S+ unit deficit compared to a coax fed dipole is
"pretty good", maybe so..."The average 2 s unit loss I saw was on 40,
not 80. 80 would have been worse. I remember a field day about 4-5
years ago where they used a G5RV on 80m. This particular one,
commercially made, was pitiful. My mobile antenna would have trounced
it...Was totally useless for us. I was so disgusted, I was gritting my
teeth. If I'm going to sit out in the sticks and eat bugs at night,
I'll be danged if I'm going to use a dummy load with wires attached.
:/ I decided that year, I'd never be stuck on anything like that
again. EVER! I have better things to do with my time otherwise. From
then on, I always bring the goodies along to build my own dipoles on
site. I have heard some on the air that seemed "ok", but the ones I've
ever seen and tried were horrible. 20 meters is about the only band
where I could see one being half decent, and even there, I bet the
average coax fed dipole would beat it. At least as far as overall
system efficiency. Who cares about a EDZ type pattern...
To each his own I guess....BTW, most G5RV's that sound "ok" on 75m,
have KW amps behind them...:/ Stick a barefoot radio on one,
and.......zzzzzzz. There are some exceptions, but most have been
converted to a total ladder line feed. MK