Simple Ham Radio Antennas--Terminated Folded Dipole. Post #425.

This antenna from "remingtoncounty100" is a traveling wave or double terminated folded dipole that operates from 1.8 MHz to 54 MHz. The antenna designer claims that the antenna exhibits "a lower noise floor" than a conventional dipole and, in most cases, doesn't require an antenna tuner. I built a similar and somewhat cruder copy of this antenna using some 300 ohm television twin lead I had in the junk box. The elements were made from twin lead as well as the feed line. I ran the feed line into a 4:1 balun and used a piece of RG-8X to connect the balun to my Drake MN-4. The antenna was cut for 40 meters and was able to work 20 meters without difficulty. Some adjustments to the antenna transmatch were needed to get a low SWR on 15 and 10 meters. If you have a spare weekend, you may want to try this much improved design over the rudimentary folded dipole I made on a Saturday morning. If you'd rather buy a commercial version of the double terminated dipole, try the WD-330 made by Diamond Antennas. Folded dipoles are fascinating antennas and will work very well if you design and build them properly. 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. You can find more Amateur Radio news at: http://kh6jrm.net; http://paper.li/kh6jrm/1430289353; and http://www.ham-radio.alltop.com. Thanks for joining us today! Aloha es 73 de Russ (KH6JRM)>