Doug wrote:
I recently put up a 135 ft dipole with open wire (ladder line) feed.

It worls fine on all bands except for 40 mters. I'm only using around
35 feet of open wire line and the result is that the antenna presents
a very high impedance on 40 meters. I'm losing much of the power in
my tuner.

I need to lengthen the feed line but what to do with the excess
length?

Can I simply tie it up into a bundle, suspending it in air?
Wind it spirally around the tree that acts as a center support?
Any other suggestions?

tnx,

Doug


Hi Doug,

Is your antenna 135' long and 35' high? I'm not sure if you were
implying that the 35 feet of open wire line was only part of the
transmission line. So, how high is the center of the antenna, and how
high are the ends?

If, in fact, it is a relatively low antenna (under 40' above ground),
then yes, that will present a high impedance to your tuner. But don't
add more transmission line to it. And never coil it up. Either one
will only degrade the antenna's performance.

I don't know what kind of tuner you are using, but a center-fed fullwave
antenna is a challenge to just about any tuner, from this end of the wire.

Try this, just for grins (only for 40 meters): take your end of the
twinlead and gently twist them together and stick them into the center
conductor of the output connector. I assume you have a great, short
ground that you are working against.

That should be something that you can tune, and assuming that your
twinlead doesn't get too close to metal on its way to the tree, you
should do better.

My preference would be that you could load up your original
configuration with the tuner, but you are trying to center-feed a
fullwave dipole (see links below - the last one).

One other option, if you can do this, would be to feed if offset from
the center. The Windom antenna does this successfully, and works great
(not just good; great!) on 80 and 40 both. Links are at the bottom of
this posting.

Hope this helps, and let us know what you do!

73,
Dave
kz1o

Links:
http://tinyurl.com/5arad
http://tinyurl.com/43nbo
http://www.njqrp.org/n2cxantennas/halfer/
http://tinyurl.com/3nyx6