Cool! That's what makes ham radio fun!

How did you hang the antenna if I may ask? Apartment dweller here, 11th floor, but I think the neighbors downstairs would see my wire hanging if I just hang them from the balcony hehe Thanks!

Agree Fred ... I’ve got my 100ft doublet up an average of 15 feet and for 500 miles on 80 and 1,000 miles to 3,000 on 40 it does v well.

How does this, "floating" effect noise floor and what about the risk of lightening strikes?

@@Justin-bd2dg Affordable automatic tuners are susceptible to lightning, even miles away. Reason: It's all active circuitry, only as reliable as the input protection circuit(s), which are skimpy for hobby-quality devices. Mil-spec is another world, $$$... Many I know have the opinion that there is no real protection against a direct strike anyway.... except disconnecting everything, but how do you disconnect a remote tuner from the antenna (conveniently, that is)?

@@avt3216 I'm using lightning arrestors, I don't see how, if wired properly, they wouldn't work? You are providing a shorter path to the ground than the radio?

Used the G5RV for years , yet the full doublet ( 450 line to the matcher ) made a BIG difference as it is a real multi band antenna .

Maybe convert to a doublet... I did, there's no comparison, the doublet is way more efficient, and truly all-band (you may have to trim the length of the feeder to make one troublesome band match OK).

Words. We all know what is meant.

@@rikoski Are you kidding? The difference matters!

I have this antenna also (260ft). Do you think your would work for 160m to 6m with out an external tuner?

@@barretto4152 probably wouldn't be a problem. Hardest part is finding the magic feed line length for each band and remember to plug in the right sections each time. Takes some trial and error.

O you have to change it out for every band. I think I'll stick with the manual tuner I'm using . Thanks

Current type.

South West Arizona.

Janet Winslow iron dust cores are not great as choke baluns, ferrite of the right mix is far more suitable, I use FT240-31 or FT240-43 cores with great success.

Hi Joel, The ladder line should be kept in the clear as much as possible, and avoid running it parallel and close to anything metal. It's the best performing single dipole I've ever used. If you can get one up, you'll probably love it.

Hi Ron, the doublet is on an MGS 30 foot mast. The ends slope down to about 6 feet off the ground.

Tnx Kevin ! 73 !

I thought that it did, Spent a lot of time researching looking for a specific length. No suggestions in any of the articles covering the "Dipole Doublet."

I think that using an external 4/1 balun fixes that alleged problem.

Thanks, I found it elsewhere and updated the link. sp5ppk.waw.pl/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/MultibandCenterfedZepp.pdf

I addressed that in the video. I pointed out that this is just an experimental set up and won't be up for long like this. However, we did have one heck of a wind storm and it survived so far.

DX(pensive)engineering. :-)

Sure, making the loss even higher.

Toroid: Only if you chose the correct toroid mix and number of turns. Ugly balun: Not likely, unless you characterize it. In general: Adding a random inductance can make matters worse. Consider you're choking common mode currents on a feeder to a load that's capacitive.... you've just tuned the feeder to pass common mode current *better*.

An rf choke is for common mode current on braid of coax, swr does not travel on braid of coax as incorrectly mentioned in the video

Is your Double Extended Zepp collinear? (the two legs fed in phase) If so, how did you do the phasing?

No its fed like a dipole.

In a couple of days.

One trick I ran across was making a parallel feeder by using two pieces of coax. Short the shields at both ends together, but do not connect them to anything else. Then use the center conductors as your feeder. The isolation of the shields makes it more forgiving for passing over or along metal.

@@loughkb I will keep that in my memory bank. That plus each coax spaced apart in a separate 1/2 inch pvc conduit might work great. I would just match the spacing of my home made ladder line. ( around 3.5 to 4 inches apart ). Attach them to the floor joists down stairs and out to the wall to my existing ladder line. Thanks.

@@loughkb EXCELLENT TRICK!

Thanks Ed. In the G5RV, the length of the window line is specific to create a 50 ohm point. It's similar, but not the same design philosophy. I probably should have mentioned it in the video. I'm sure I'm going to get a lot of comments from other people that may confuse the two antennas.

Kevin Loughin Too short to convert to a doublet?

@@edneely No. and it would probably still work ok on 80. But why? Doesn't it work well as it is?

Kevin Loughin It seems to work well, but I have about 100 feet of coax to get it into my house. I wonder how much loss I have. Hard to say.

@@edneely Ed, I generally recommend to anyone who uses a G5RV to cut off the matching section and run ladder line all the way from the center insulator to the tuner. The G5RV has very high SWR on a number of bands so you're losing quite a bit of signal in the coax on those bands due to the mismatch. As noted by the chart in the video, the ladder line will exhibit very low loss under those same conditions. I am not sure why but somehow the G5RV has, over the years, become somewhat mystical in its abilities. It's actually cheaper to make a doublet than it is to buy a commercially-made G5RV (especially when the cost of a long run of coax to the G5RV is added) and the low loss of the ladder line will allow the doublet to be a better performer on nearly every band.

boxingday11 Some very clever balanced ATUs have been built but mostly by people who have not thought about the problem.

lol I was always thought he was kind of a young tech guy myself

@@mikemcdonald5147 Yeah, he doesn't know old, yet.

Several parts of my body are much older than the calendar says they should be. :-)

@@loughkb haha I know that feeling well LOL

No. Since it's a balanced feedline, the field around it should be weak.

@@loughkb okay great, thanks for confirming that. It helps in planning where to put it.👍

That's an off center fed dipole and won't have the advantage of low loss on the feed line. In fact, being asymmetrical, it will radiate off the feed line. The doublet is symmetrical, a completely balanced system.

Read the papers. They're an easy read and clear a few things up.

Kevin where did you get your 60 ft. Mast?

When done properly the open-wire/ladder line does not radiate, this is a strange but popular myth, the G5RV and derivatives use the line as a matching section. Unfortunately often without any effort to reduce common mode current. There is merit in carefully choosing the length of a doublet to avoid wildly high impedances at the feedpoint.

@@g0fvt Yes. After putting some more more brain cells into the problem I agree that the ladder line should not radiate. Common mode current is still a problem. That's why you should put a common mode choke or balun at the feed end of the ladder line. Not to match impedance, but to suppress common mode current. If there is a suitable antenna tuner at the feed end of the ladder line it also suppress common mode current. I read recommendations to add a common mode choke or balun to a G5RV or ZS6BKW. I did such a modification to a G4RV but I still have to test it.

@@56932982 it has to be said that the baluns incorporated in many tuners are not very good, since the impedance of the doublet can be all over the place I have decided not to use an impedance transforming balun. Most ATUs struggle with very low impedance loads, and are more efficient with higher Z so I am using just a common mode choke "1:1" the ATU will not flash over readily (7kV capacitors). It is handy to have an HF antenna that is compact and versatile, I have no interest in HF beams at present. VHF though is a different matter..

You cleverly answered your own question..... the impedances match.

Loss in the transmatch depends on the degree of mismatch it's dealing with. Higher mismatch, more loss.

@@loughkb That follows, I see the logic. Thanks Kevin.

@@acestudioscouk-Ace-G0ACE any reflected power loss is due to feeder attenuation not the tuner absorbing power as its reflected back to the antenna at the tuner with no loss at the reflection point

@@Pioneer936 Thanks Paul, I thought wherever you have a coil, you have a loss, however small. Thanks for putting me right.

@@acestudioscouk-Ace-G0ACE the book reflections by Walt Maxwell explains this subject in detail

Maybe, maybe not. It depends on what the impedance present is at the specific frequency your operating on at the time. What the 4 to 1 balun will do, is bring the high impedance has down closer to 50 ohms, giving a tuner less work to do in many cases. The impedance on this antenna it's going to be all over the place on different frequencies.

No. It must be a current balun, and you can use a 1:1 if you want. The impedance is going to vary quite a bit depending on frequency, but will usually be quite high. A 4:1 will bring it down a bit so the tuner has less of a mismatch to deal with, resulting in less loss in the tuner.

@@loughkb thank you very much for your answer. So I can use it for my new antenna system. 73 de Mike....

It doesn't matter very much really, but I'm using 14ga solid wire with a jacket on it.

Thanks.

Current.

I knew that when I found the animation. I left it that way for two reasons. One, it sort of fit the old time look of the opener. (They often made mistakes like that in the past) And two, I was curious to see how many people would notice and point that out. You're only the second one in three years. :-)

Ever tried to buy a metric tape measure? Or a metric ruler?

@@avt3216 try buying any tape measure here that dosn't have both?

Although the issues you mention are certainly possible, they pose much less of a problem than one might think. I've used ladder line with a number of antennae for years with no ill effects. As long as the ladder line crosses metal at at 90 degree angle and/or for only short distances the effect is negligible. In fact, I run it into the eave of my roof (near some aluminum siding) all the way into my shack. If the feeder were to become unbalanced I would notice RF getting into nearby devices - something I've never noted. As far as rain or ice is concerned, their impact can be alleviated by using true ladder line (parallel wires with plastic or other non-conducting standoffs between them) as opposed to window line which can 'bridge' rain or ice between the wires. I was convinced for many years that ladder line was just about useless because of the many stories I'd heard about it. However, once I began to use it I realized that the problems I had heard were very much the exception rather than the rule. In any case, I think the ladder line vs. coax decision comes down to one thing - how much loss is a person willing to tolerate? If the antenna is constructed such that it presents a 50 Ohm impedance (or nearly so) at the desired frequency, then using coax is fine. If, however, the antenna impedance is significantly higher or lower than 50 Ohms, then the use of a balanced feedline will provide significantly improved performance because of its low loss.

@@BrianEsche I used window wire as feedline for about 30 yrs when I lived in the dry climate of the Colorado high desert and was quite happy with it's performance. But about 12 yrs ago we moved to central PA, where the more frequent precipitation has rendered the window wire feeds unusable much of the time. I now include the OCD in my arsenal of wires for wet-weather use.

The ARRL antenna book shows a simple way to measure imbalance: Couple a field strength meter to a ferrite toroid with a few turns of wire through the center, then put the ladder line through the toroid. You at least get a relative balance reading, so you can change the one leg length or positioning to get a (better) balance. My take is that yes, the feed line will radiate a little because the antenna is going to be a little imbalanced.... but so what? Nobody expects a perfect pattern!

I think I have that tuner. :) It's 9:1 impedance.

The 450 ohm is for the ladder line itself. The actual ohm the tuner sees or in this case the balun sees will vary from band to band, see the video part comparing coax vs ladder line, the ohms can be as high as 5000 . The 4:1balun in this case is there to interface the ladder line to coax and help the tuner out a little. Note some people recommend a good 1:1 choke aka current balun because as you can see in the chart in video sometimes the ohms can be low on certain freq so stepping down the ohms with a 4:1 or higher would not be desirable since most tuners are more efficient with tuning higher impedances

@@Gabagabe1 thanks... so much to learn Lol

astrorad2000 it doesn't matter much, it just gets the impedance in the right ball park. Note that most 9:1 are ununs. Note the balun used here has two cores wound seperately, many 4:1 baluns are poor designs and don't address common mode current. The baluns in nearly all commercial antenna tuners are junk too. An open wire fed doublet is a great versatile antenna if done right.

@@g0fvt Thank you for the info. I forgot that this is a balanced antenna. It will be nice to see the results of Kevin's testing it out. Bill, WB9NYI

@@astrorad2000 I use a current balun to do similar. The doublet was extremely popular in the past, but the popular use of coax has driven us to antennas that are close to 50 ohms. The issues with the baluns built into most ATUs is that they have some phase shift between the windings and the legs of the feeder are not driven quite 180 degrees apart. They are also voltage baluns so the current in each leg is not automatically going to be equal and opposite leading to feeder radiation and possibly issues with RF in the shack. The object of the two core 4:1 baluns is that they behave as a common mode choke forcing the current in each leg to be equal and opposite.