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 di...