Just a wee question.................

i remember years ago we kicked out with a 5w NRG Kits VFO Tx into a 'standard' dipole antenna (centre fed half wave with 1:1 balun) from a high housing scheme and it was reasonably strong over the city.It done well and having a fan built on to the tx kept it surprisingly on frequency even tho vfos had the tendancy to drift at times when warm.

we then built a dipole using old stainless steel cb whips cut to the correct lengths (same config as above) and it too worked well with a signal all over -as we did have great line of sight.-this was done 1 as a project but 2 to be less obvious on the roof.

Question is with the standard dipole the signal 'seemed' really strong whereas with the thin whips it seemed like a 'weaker' signal although it still kicked out.

Is this imagined or is this the case? I know the thicker the radiator the more power it can handle but this is same power in each case.

piraterx wrote:Just a wee question.................

i remember years ago we kicked out with a 5w NRG Kits VFO Tx into a 'standard' dipole antenna (centre fed half wave with 1:1 balun) from a high housing scheme and it was reasonably strong over the city.It done well and having a fan built on to the tx kept it surprisingly on frequency even tho vfos had the tendancy to drift at times when warm.

we then built a dipole using old stainless steel cb whips cut to the correct lengths (same config as above) and it too worked well with a signal all over -as we did have great line of sight.-this was done 1 as a project but 2 to be less obvious on the roof.

Question is with the standard dipole the signal 'seemed' really strong whereas with the thin whips it seemed like a 'weaker' signal although it still kicked out.

Is this imagined or is this the case? I know the thicker the radiator the more power it can handle but this is same power in each case.

Thicker the radiator the more bandwidth .

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I thought the samething until I built a ground plane with 4 wire radials, that worked really well. You can make aerials out of wire and they should work the same, the thicker they are the more power it could handle the more bandwidth it will get.

Sometimes people use dipoles without a balun, sometimes it can be ok but theres always a chance of coax acting as part of the aerial, you’ll get less signal because of that. I’ve heard it said that thicker elements are less effected by nearby objects it could be a myth I don’t know, in directional aerials folded dipoles are normally used. The nrg stub works well, if your using a dipole without 1 you can always coil the coax a little way along the boom to trap the signal, they both work..

radionortheast wrote:I thought the samething until I built a ground plane with 4 wire radials, that worked really well. You can make aerials out of wire and they should work the same, the thicker they are the more power it could handle the more bandwidth it will get.

Sometimes people use dipoles without a balun, sometimes it can be ok but theres always a chance of coax acting as part of the aerial, you’ll get less signal because of that. I’ve heard it said that thicker elements are less effected by nearby objects it could be a myth I don’t know, in directional aerials folded dipoles are normally used. The nrg stub works well, if your using a dipole without 1 you can always coil the coax a little way along the boom to trap the signal, they both work..

This is all well true radionorthwest.but sometimes having to much bandwidth would mean less gain .that's just my theory .

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