BH: Now as to your question in regards to Preformance.
This is where alot of op's get hung up. A vswr of 2.0 to 1, if my old memory still serves me is 98% efficient. So putting this in simple terms, if you have 100 watts of power delivered to the feed point of the dipole(the insulator)at a 2.0 to 1 VSWR the antenna will radiate 98 watts. Now in most cases radios of the modern Ara will accept this and not reduce the output. Some of the early solid state HF rigs like the TS120/130/140 and the same vintage ICOM radios will in some cases reduce the output to protect the final transistors from overheating or seeing a mismatch greater than 2 to 1..
So keeping this in mind any VSWR of 1.5 to 1 can be considered to be 100% efficient.
So to put this in the context of your question, if you have a dipole on 80m which is 2 to 1 VSWR at 3.8 Mhz....1.5 to1 at 3.9 Mhz ....2 to 1 at 4.0 Mhz...
We have a Winner! NO one and I mean NO one will ever see a difference in signal strength if your antenna is 98% or 100%...if they say they can Balderdash
!
HB, this is just an example again every antenna install can and will differ. This is just a shooting range.
I've seen antenna installs do exactly this and sometimes better bandwith, however most generally somewhat less. It is all determined by multiple factors, examples of which are the height above ground, objects in near-by proximity and the size or diameter of the radiating elements. Again just to name a few!
Damn it's getting windy around here
All the Best
Gary
