Bill Grimwood wrote:
I don't know much about these antennas but I have a friend in Colorado who
has one and we often talk on 20 or 40 meters. He has only 100 watts output
and he puts a strong signal into Alabama. It certainly seems to work for
him. I have a Carolina Windom and I believe his Isotron performs better
than my windom.

Due, no doubt, to radiation from his feedline. If you both
replaced the vertical section of your feedline with a good
ground-plane vertical, it might improve even more.
--
73, Cecil http://www.qsl.net/w5dxp

Cecil Moore wrote:
Bill Grimwood wrote:

I don't know much about these antennas but I have a friend in Colorado
who has one and we often talk on 20 or 40 meters. He has only 100
watts output and he puts a strong signal into Alabama. It certainly
seems to work for him. I have a Carolina Windom and I believe his
Isotron performs better than my windom.


Due, no doubt, to radiation from his feedline. If you both
replaced the vertical section of your feedline with a good
ground-plane vertical, it might improve even more.


Bill;

The best antenna for you is the antenna that works. I use a B&W folded
dipole antenna daily. It does the job I need it to do. There are those
that deride it as a "lossy dummy load". What it is is an antenna that
dumps any excess energy into a 600 ohm resistor. The excess energy is
that which is reflected back into the finals by any other antenna. It
allows me to QSY and be tuned to any frequency I wish to use. In that I
use NTIA frequencies in addition to Ham frequencies this it the best
antenna for my use. As I said it works.

Dave WD9BDZ

David G. Nagel wrote:
The excess energy is
that which is reflected back into the finals by any other antenna.

Sorry, in a tuned system, the "excess energy" is re-reflected
back toward the antenna at the match point. Here's an example:

100w XMTR--50 ohm coax--+--1/2WL of 300 ohm twinlead--50 ohm antenna

More than half the forward power is reflected from the antenna
but it is turned around and re-reflected back toward the antenna
at the coax/twinlead junction at point '+'. The reflected energy
reaching the finals is ZERO!

Reflected energy, per se, is not bad. Reflected energy that is
allowed to reach the finals is bad. In most systems, an antenna
tuner solves the problem.
--
73, Cecil http://www.qsl.net/w5dxp