The primary reason is lower loss. Another good reason is when used with an antenna tuner, you can get multiband operation out of a single dipole. The antenna tuner tunes the ladder line. This works great for hams who want to operate on all the HF ham bands, but only have room for a single dipole.
I see. Does any of that matter if you only want to listen and not broadcast? (i.e. tuner, ladder line, etc)
thanks
And, it's much cheaper than coax.
My local hardware store sells it for $0.15 a foot
For receiver only you might not even need a tuner, I think they help.
Many table top shortwave receivers have twinlead antenna inputs, well mine do anyway.
Check out the four dollar special antenna:
http://www.hamuniverse.com/fourdollarspecialw1gfh.html
And, it's much cheaper than coax.
My local hardware store sells it for $0.15 a foot
For receiver only you might not even need a tuner, I think they help.
Many table top shortwave receivers have twinlead antenna inputs, well mine do anyway.
Check out the four dollar special antenna:
http://www.hamuniverse.com/fourdollarspecialw1gfh.html
DONT confuse ladder line with twinlead wire. Twinlead sells at .15ft, ladder lines at 1.50ft.
thanks, but whats the difference other than holes between the rungs of the ladder line?
Slightly lower loss on the ladder vs ribbon line. The ladder being talked about is probably 450 ohms, heavier gauge copper, and handles more power. The 15 cent ribbon line is 300 ohms, and WON'T handle a kilowatt of transmitter power like the other stuff.