Saturday, March 30, 2024

Multi-band antenna change - back to the Off Centre Fed dipole

Lucky to have the space for this sort of thing, I had put up a full wave "sky" loop for 80m. It was suspended from a number of trees around the yard but not very high and it came down in the wind a bit. I still have mono-band dipoles for 80m and 40m but it's nice to have a multi-band antenna for general listening without switching. 

Yesterday I pulled down the loop and replaced it with an Off Centre Fed dipole for 80m and above. In the picture to the right it's the front most antenna hanging from my antenna tree so up pretty high.

The wire lengths are: Short side = 39.5 feet, Long side = 94.5 feet suggested by Palomar.

Happily it resonates quite well on the first go with a 4:1 balun as usual. Quite usable without tuner on 80, 40 & 20m.

Before I took down the full wave loop I took this screen shot from SDR++ looking at 40m:

Here's a screen shot of SDR++ with the same gain settings on the OCFD:


Signals, and noise, are greater. 

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