W4FT on Amateur Radio

Last week, I replaced the HGSW beam with a full wavelength 80 meter Skywave Loop Antenna. The antenna is about 285 feet long and is suspended between four trees at about 80 feet high, roughly shaped as a trapezoid (two parallel sides). It is fed with about 100 feet of 450 ohm ladder line into a 4:1 balun, followed by about 20 ft of coax into the radio.

Reason for change:
While the HGSW beam performed well on 80 meters, it was only marginal on 40 m and not dramatically better than a dipole on the higher bands. Lately though, it has become almost impossible to tune it on 40 meters. Read more…