OCFD improved?
Posted: Fri Jun 14, 2024 12:00 pm
My main HF antenna has been a 160m stranded 10G half-wave off-center 20% fed dipole at 90 feet between high pine trees. The 6:1 balun with common mode choke gives a clean signal to the remote AH-730 tuner. (Yes, the design looks a bit like a heavy-duty big B*ckm*ster.)
So what's not to like? It's landed a few DX awards, though i notice that, as expected from its huge length, it works a bit better on lower rather than higher frequency bands. So as any ham at Solar Max, I can't leave well enough alone, so I decided to add a second pair of elements, still for a 20% feedpoint but cut for half-wave 20m. So now it's a kind of offset fan dipole.
Does it tune? Yes. Is it any better? Maybe some, but watch this space for details, as I suspect it will be more improved on some bands than others. EZnec suggests a more useful polar diagram for it, but let's see....
While I was constructing it, a mischievous thought occurred: what would happen if the long and short arms of the second ele…login to view the rest of this post
So what's not to like? It's landed a few DX awards, though i notice that, as expected from its huge length, it works a bit better on lower rather than higher frequency bands. So as any ham at Solar Max, I can't leave well enough alone, so I decided to add a second pair of elements, still for a 20% feedpoint but cut for half-wave 20m. So now it's a kind of offset fan dipole.
Does it tune? Yes. Is it any better? Maybe some, but watch this space for details, as I suspect it will be more improved on some bands than others. EZnec suggests a more useful polar diagram for it, but let's see....
While I was constructing it, a mischievous thought occurred: what would happen if the long and short arms of the second ele…login to view the rest of this post