- If your antenna is fed with coax you don't need a balun.
- The 50 ohm coax is close enough to the 70-or-so ohms
- of a plain dipole.
-
- bob
- k5qwg

And . . . That 'plain' Dipole Antenna is by-design
best used for a single specific frequency.

Very Good for Amateur Radio single band operation.

Not-So-Good for a Shortwave Listener (SWL) who
intends on using the Dipole Antenna across the
entire Shortwave (HF) Band from 1.8 MHz to 30 MHz.

1 - Make the Dipole Antenna into a Windom Antenna
( Off-Center-Fed-Dipole ) for better Multi-Band use from
a single Antenna.

2 - Use a 4:1 Matching Transformer {Balun} for improved
Broad-Band characteristics for Across-the-Band Shortwave
Radio Listening (SWL) at the expense of single frequency
performance.

The "Best" Antenna is not always the 'best' antenna.

theoretically speaking - it should not work,
but hey... What Works. WORKS ! - iane ~ RHF