[Antennas] Inverted V question

Fri Nov 25 22:17:04 EST 2005

> Hi to all, happy turkey days. I am looking for comments from
> operators that might be using or have used an inverted v antenna. 
> What I have in mind is just for temporary use (contest or casual use)
> . I would find a high tree and shoot a line over it and then pull up
> the antenna. The tree is the center of the antenna. I have an auto
> tuner and a manual tuner available. So, would the best way to feed it
> be with 450 ohm twin lead? I would like to operate from 80 to 10
> meters and if the length is measured for 80 meters, what kind of
> reports do you get? Thank you for your comments, Dave, NC6P.
>Sound idea. 
Twin-lead/ladder-line must be kept away from metal objects...IF you are phobic 
about using coax, 2 equal lengths of coax can be used to make up a twin-lead that 
is immune from the metal object problem. Tie the braid together at each end (top 
can be run back to ground if you want) and ground the braid at the lower end....feed 
the center as your twin-lead.....50-ohm coax will give you 100-ohm twin-lead, 75-
ohm coax will give 150-ohm.
An 80mtr invert-'v' can tend to yield some odd-ball nuls on the higher bands, but is 
not a real bad option if you can only put up one antenna. You can get better omni 
pattern and some gain by making it a set of crossed invert-'v's..feed the north-south 
legs together and the east-west legs together....I call it a modified Maypole and am 
using it here as my 80mtr antenna. Add 2 legs for a true Maypole antenna....feed 
every other leg together...very good omni pattern and some gain. A little harder to 
set up but can be a good antenna.
Mel
N7OKL