Communications - The Versatile Dirt Cheap D-I-Y Dipole

[ATCclears]

The Versatile Dirt Cheap D-I-Y Dipole

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[AMProducts]

Some of these kinds of things work, most of them don't. Chances are the mismatch between the impedences (when it goes from unbalanced coax to balanced dipole) is turning the whole jacket of the coax into the antenna. I would theorize you could simply cut to the chase and just put a 50ohm terminator on the feedline and get similar results. The other possibility is simply elevating the antenna is what's adding range.

I hate to poohpooh good ideas that show potential of working simply because they lack technological rigor, but getting the most out of a system requires more than just applied guesstimates of what's happening.

Here's a similar idea, executed much better... https://www.arrl.org/files/file/Technology/tis/info/pdf/0791033.pdf

The one thing about VHF and UHF is that simple choke baluns can do a pretty good job of controlling RF into and out of the antenna system. It gets orders of magnitude more difficult when you get into HF.