FeedForward
Member
- Joined
- Jul 7, 2014
- Messages
- 75
One reason to move from a dipole to a folded dipole is that the folded dipole has a broader bandwidth. And, increasing the diameter of the elements also yields more bandwidth. How about going to some surplus copper pipe 2 or more inches in diameter? Now we're talking. One method of changing the feedpoint impedance is to make each 1/2 wave element a different diameter. There are lots of reasons why you would want to use a FD including feeding it with open wire balanced feeders. You don't see that much at VHF and UHF but it works great at HF. I agree that signal strength is a better way to go when testing VHF and above antennas. Otherwise break the system down into parts for testing. You should be able to use the MFJ in grid dip mode to tune the FD to resonance - at least thats a start. That's where every antenna should start in my opinion.
Of course you always hear that an antenna tuner will solve every problem. It will if it is at the feedpoint. How many of those have you seen lately? I think Heathkit made a feedpoint tuner that could be remotely adjusted. Other than that, pretty much every solid state transceiver needs a tuner to prevent blown output transistors. But nothing's perfect and no matter how badly the design comes out, a little power always makes it into the ether. You remember ether, don't you? I worked a lot of DX on what was probably 10 watts radiated power.
FF
Of course you always hear that an antenna tuner will solve every problem. It will if it is at the feedpoint. How many of those have you seen lately? I think Heathkit made a feedpoint tuner that could be remotely adjusted. Other than that, pretty much every solid state transceiver needs a tuner to prevent blown output transistors. But nothing's perfect and no matter how badly the design comes out, a little power always makes it into the ether. You remember ether, don't you? I worked a lot of DX on what was probably 10 watts radiated power.
FF
