dipole to get the most bands with tuner

[rjvalenta]

relatively new to HF, everything i've done so far has been FT8, and i was super proud of the 20m dipole i built... until a branch fell and did epic damage to my house and took out my dipole in the process...

my MFJ tuner couldn't get my 20m dipole to work 6m, so my plan once the roof is repaired is to make a fan dipole, 20m/6m... because i was able to use the tuner to do 80m, 60m, 40m, 30m, 20m, 17m, 15m, and 10m... when i add some legs for 6m i should be well set up...

and then i started thinking about 160m... i've never been able to tune that...

space is limited, but i've seen some interesting builds where i could use 450ohm window line to make a 40m dipole.

SO - my questions for the experienced operators and antenna builders...

1: will adding 6m legs to my DXE-MC20-1-1T balun that i will use to rebuild the 20m dipole impact my ability to use the 20m dipole on all the bands i was able to get to before with my tuner?

2: will adding the 40m 'linear loaded' legs impact the 20m dipole on all the bands i was able to get to before with my tuner?

3: in the example i found from ARRL (shown below), he's using less length of window line for 40m than i would be using of 12ga stranded for 20m... would it be better to double that length, cut and tune for 80m, and hope the tuner can tune that to 160m?

4: if not a 40m what non-resonant dipoles should i be able to get to 160m with a tuner?

thanks for any input... if the tree that dropped the branch hadnt had to be removed i would have considered an octopus for all this, because it would have hidden it from the neighbors enough for me to get by with the HOA... but now that it's gone, my best options are simple wire dipoles to not attract too much attention.

example of what i was going to add to my balun with 20m and 6m as a fan dipole: http://www.arrl.org/files/file/Technology/tis/info/pdf/0207040.pdf

Richard
N0TZC

 

[prcguy]

A 135ft dipole center fed with 450 to 600 ohm balaned line to a tuner is the classic 80 through 10 and everything in between antenna. The key to multiband is using a low loss higher impedance balanced line instead of coax. For example an 80m center fed will match close to 50 ohms on 80 but 40m the feedpoint impedance will be about 2,500 ohms and an impossible match to 50 ohm coax and advertised coax loss goes through the roof when operated under high VSWR.

If you only have room for something smaller like a 65ft 40m dipole, feed it with ladder line and a good tuner will light it up possibly 5MHz through 6m. I knew a guy that ran a 50ft long center fed dipole (25ft each side) with wide spaced 600 ohm ladder line and his tuner would get a good match on 80m and he put out a respectable signal there. The same antenna could not be tuned up using 450 ladder line.