Remote tuner on fan vertical

[KC1URK]

I use a fan vertical over a decent ground radial system on the ground - each bands radiating wire tuned to the portion of the various bands I’m interested in.

Have a chance to pick up a remote tuner cheap. Curious if I mounted it at the verticals feedpoint, would it tune each specific radiator to resonance or would it try to tune the entire antenna (all radiators) as a whole and “mess up” any hope of a low launch angle might be expected with a single tuned vertical wire.

I like the idea of the tuner as it would allow me more room to roam on the bands while still getting a good match.

thoughts?

 

[K3ZD]

The idea of a fan dipole is to provide an acceptable SWR on whatever bands the antenna has been designed for. By acceptable I mean something that could easily be matched by a simple desktop antenna tuner. In the HF bands any SWR less than even 4:1 should not create much loss if you use a good coax cable like military spec RG-213. If you are going to use a remote tuner you might as well dump the fan idea and just make a dipole that is long enough for the lowest band you operate. Sounds like the fan dipole you have works well so why mess with it?

 

[KC1URK]

…just kinda hoping someone would give me a reason to buy the tuner…
Feedline is Lmr-400. Antenna performs good. You’re right.

Guess I’ll waste the money I was going to spend on the tuner on food, or bills, or grandma’s insulin…

 

[prcguy]

While a remote tuner should provide an acceptable match on most bands, I wouldn’t recommend making a vertical dipole for the lowest band then using a tuner to resonate the higher bands. The reason is the radiation pattern can be good at the horizon on the lowest band but point way up on higher bands not being useful for DX or local. The popular 43ft vertical is a great antenna to cover 80 through 17m and even 160 but not very good on 15, 12 and 10m due to the high radiation angles. If you cut that down to about 22ft or close to a 5/8 wave on 10m then it will work well on 40 through 10m but it’s getting to be short and inefficient on 80 and 160m.

A tuned fan dipole or fan vertical for all your favorite bands will ensure RF currents flow mostly on the band you are transmitting on and the radiation pattern will be low and good for DX. In that case the remote tuner can help stretch the BW to cover the entire band and moe if needed.