Simple Ham Radio Antennas--Dipole Center-Loaded with Ladder Line. Post #408.

An excellent tutorial on center loaded dipole antennas fed with ladder line from Stan Gibilisco (W1GV). He begins with a simple explanation of a center fed dipole fed with coaxial cable and then transitions to the same antenna fed with ladder line. If you cut your dipole for the lowest frequency of choice, say somewhere in the 40 meter band, and feed the antenna with ladder line into a balanced tuner (or through a 4:1 balun into your regular "tuner"), you could use the antenna for any amateur radio frequency from 40 meters through 10 meters. If you feed the dipole with coaxial cable, you would have a mono band antenna which could be used on the third harmonic of the fundamental frequency. A properly designed 40 meter antenna cut for the lower portion of the 40 meter band would do fairly well in the SSB portion of 15 meters. But, for other bands, the coax-fed dipole antenna would experience high SWR. This antenna is simple to build, erect, and use. For the latest Amateur Radio news and events, please check out the blog sidebars. These news feeds are updated daily. You can follow our blog community with a free e-mail subscription or by tapping into the blog RSS feed. Thanks for joining us today! Aloha es 73 de Russ (KH6JRM).