Hi Shaun

There is a little variation on the antenna that you are proposing that I've 
found to be extremely effective over the years.  It involves cutting one 
antenna for the low end of 75 meters, say around 3800 KHz, and the other 
one for about 7100 KHz.  You then string them in an inverted vee 
configuration off a center mast at right angles to each other.  You tie one 
leg of the 75 meter antenna and one leg of the 40 meter antenna to the 
center conductor of your coax, and you tie the other leg of the 75 meter 
antenna and the other leg of the 40 meter antenna to the braid of the coax.

I had this antenna up at my previous QTH in Bergen, NY where I had a large 
enough yard to string the antenna, and it loaded everywhere easily with an 
auto tuner on 80 through 6 meters, and performed like a champ.  There was a 
couple of things about this antenna that was particularly nice.  One thing 
was that the SWR was fairly low on 75, 40, 15, 10, and 6 meters even 
without an antenna tuner.  It also seemed to play particularly nicely on 17 
meters when run through the auto tuner.

The only band that I found a few tuners that didn't like to load the system 
was 20 meters, although the internal tuner in my Kenwood TS690S had no 
problem with it, and the Icom AT180 tuner and the LDG AT11 loaded it right 
up with no problem.  The Dentron Super Tuner didn't like it, though.

The other beautiful thing about this antenna is that it has a lot of 
mechanical stability in high winds.  The four perpendicular wires coming 
off the center insulator also tend to act as guy wires for the center mast, 
and I have watched that mast barely wiggle in 70 mile per hour winds.

And, not only does the antenna load on all of those bands, but it will 
stomp a G5RV into the ground when it comes to making contacts.  If you have 
the space, and can get it past the XYL, give it a try.  I think you'll like 
the results.

73, de Lou K2LKK



At 12:55 PM 3/28/2008 +1100, you wrote:
>the problem with running a long wire is that my back fence is colorbond
>or however you spell it. it's that metal stuff anyways, and that eoulc
>either be a hinderence or a help depending on how I work things.
>I want to put up a dipole but I'm thinking of making two feed off the
>same coax although I'm not quite sure how to do it. I'm going to make
>one for 40 and 80 meters and one that will serve on 15 and 10 meters.
>I shall probably use galvinised pipe to hold the whole thing up. whether
>I want an inverted v configuration or not is the next question I need to
>ask myself.
>
>Shaun
>web sites:
>http://www.myspace.com/blindmanshaunoliver
>http://blindman.homelinux.org/~blindman/
>skype: brailledude
>
>
>On 28/03/2008 12:50 PM, the old scribe known as Colin McDonald was able
>to impart this pearl of wisdom:
> > are you going to run a random wire/long wire, or dipole configuration?
> > You'll need a tuner, or at least, something to test SWR if you run a random
> > wire.  If you use the dipole configuration, you can get close enough to
> > resonance by careful measurement of the wire halves.
> > I'm sure you've probably gone over all this since I didn't closely follow
> > all the threads of late.
> > On the top of your house, do you have a chimney, or furnace exhaust outlet,
> > or even a fan vent?  If so, you can use rope  as an insulator and run the
> > wire from the top of the house down to the furthest point on the fence.
> > Use some 2 inch PVC if you want to get the fence end of the wire up a 
> little
> > higher off the ground.
> > You can use rope, or heavy duty zip ties to secure the PVC to the fence
> > line.
> > If you use a random wire, or long wire, make sure you have some sort of
> > counter poise.....as much wire thrown down on the roof of the house, if 
> that
> > is where you end up running the wire from, as possible.
> > I'm not sure if you have a fully fenced front and back yard or not, but
> > putting a 25 foot chunk of galvanized pipe up at the front corner, and
> > another pipe of similar length up in the back opposite corner would 
> give you
> > a nice run and make it easier to run a dipole instead of an end fend long
> > wire.
> > And, if you have a long enough fence line, a long wire around the entire
> > fence line would probably work not to badly on 75/80 either.
> >
> > 73
> > Colin, V A6BKX
> >
> >
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Louis Kim Kline
A.R.S. K2LKK
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