• You can now help support WorldwideDX when you shop on Amazon at no additional cost to you! Simply follow this Shop on Amazon link first and a portion of any purchase is sent to WorldwideDX to help with site costs.
  • Click here to find out how to win free radios from Retevis!

If I am trying to avoid a tuner on 160-20 is the fan dipole the best option?

mr_fx

Sr. Member
Oct 8, 2011
1,536
172
173
Kansas City
If I am trying to avoid a tuner on 160-20 is the fan dipole the best option?

I would like to use only my internal tuner on my Yeasu FT-890. At least for now any way.

Or would a 160m loop be the way to go?

Other options?
 

Try the loop, after you find out the internal antenna tuner will not match all bands then build the fan dipole.
 
Reality is that there is no avoiding a good tuner. It is an integral part of any decent ham station....if you want the capability of using ALL portions of multiple bands. Those lower bands are so relatively wide that no antenna has the bandwidth to cover them top to bottom and the built in rig tuners are usually limited to 2:1 corrections. Get a good tuner that is of lifetime quality and just be happy with it.

Good luck
 
If I am trying to avoid a tuner on 160-20 is the fan dipole the best option?

How can you avoid using a piece of gear like this if you expect to use as many bands as you hope to use? No antenna is perfect; and not all are going to have the impedance you want even if they are fairly resonant. Even the dipole is going to be a bear to tune even after trimming to your liking. The loop certainly isn't going to be much different.
 
Reality is that there is no avoiding a good tuner. It is an integral part of any decent ham station....if you want the capability of using ALL portions of multiple bands. Those lower bands are so relatively wide that no antenna has the bandwidth to cover them top to bottom and the built in rig tuners are usually limited to 2:1 corrections. Get a good tuner that is of lifetime quality and just be happy with it.

Good luck

not avoiding it at all, just postponing it. also my internal tuner is the Yeasu ATU-2 and it handles a 3:1. Like I say not planning to use it forever, maybe just a few months
 
If you have the room go for the 160 M loop. Feed it with 450 ohm ladder line to a 4:1 Current Balun, then coax to your rig. Put it up as high as you can (even if it's only 25 feet) in a horizontal loop, that way you do not have to be concerned where the feed point is. Loops are very forgiving, low noise, and work on both even and odd harmonics of the fundamental. Like they said: Experiment, have fun, and be surprised.
 
Asking questions is good. you want to learn something build it.

Loop on 160 is a full wave length. Big honking antenna.

What is the impedance of that loop antenna on 1.8mhz? What is the impedance on the other bands of that loop?

This is what you have to consider when using a loop antenna.

The internal tuner on that FT890 will not match all bands, no exceptions.

Also you need to feed that loop with ladder to minimize the losses in your transmission line.

The loop on the higher bands will give you some gain, in what direction that gain is in can not be predicted, build it and try it.

Do yourself some studying, get an antenna handbook, get the reflections book so you can understand how transmission lines work.

Used antenna tuners can be had for around $200.00 or less. Or build your own.

If you want a multiband wire antenna with a 50 ohm impedance and use a single coax to feed it then fan dipole is your answer. Will it cover the full band? Yes and no. Depends on what band you want to use, and what portion of the band.

I will assume that CW portion will not be used so for 40 meters and up Yes you can make a fan dipole to cover the full phone portion of each band with exception of maybe 10 meters.

Your internal antenna tuner will touch up the impedance mismatch and allow you to work the full 10 meter band with some loss in the transmission line.

You are asking some good questions, but there is no silver bullet one size fits all antenna.

Experiment, build some of the antennas and see how they work for you. Nice thing about wires is if you do not like the performance you can always make another antenna using the same wire.

The antenna is 95% of your station, you also have to get that thing up in the air to get some performance out of it.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 person
Consider using a Balun to tranfer from Coax to open wire feedline near the tuner.
When the antenna does not tune well on a band, the losses in the open wire are a lot less than in a short peice of coax.
3 to 1 missmatch is not too bad but say 10 to 1 is a setup for a lot of loss, so minimize it where you can by using open wire or ladder line.
Then there is the matter of using an amplifier with such missmatches.
Even a tuner has a hard time under some condition and at power.
Good luck.
 

dxChat
Help Users
  • No one is chatting at the moment.
  • dxBot:
    Greg T has left the room.
  • @ BJ radionut:
    EVAN/Crawdad :love: ...runna pile-up on 6m SSB(y) W4AXW in the air
    +1
  • @ Crawdad:
    One of the few times my tiny station gets heard on 6m!:D
  • @ Galanary:
    anyone out here familiar with the Icom IC-7300 mods