Attic Dipole Ladder Line

The infamous attic dipole.

Attic dipole ladder line.

You mention a dipole and getting a balun if this is for a coax fed dipole unless its got traps or some other way to get multiple bands you only usually get about two bands out of a coax fed resonant dipole. Mac af4ps fp 51 note. Let your antenna tuner worry about getting the best swr out of this system. With ladder line there is very little contact area between the spreaders and the conductors and when the other two type of loss are addressed can be an extremely low loss feed system.

Paint or tape the white ladder line to coax transition fitting use cameo dacron for supports color white insulators tie supports to trees at least 20 above grounds people can t mess with learned this the hard way. If you don t have any fire breaks within the wall you can cut out a hole in the wall run the ladder line down inside the wall from the attic and install a plastic bracket and plastic blank outlet cover with binding posts for the ladder line connection if you wish. This was installed at a previous qth i will be the first or millionth remember i m from fl to affirm that the antenna is the determining factor for success when it comes to one s station set up. Use your antenna tuner and determine on which bands you can achieve a 1 1 swr.

It s easy to lose 75 of your power in your coax when operating on bands where the non resonant dipole presents a high feedpoint impedance to the feedline. The better your antenna the more success you will have making contacts. If you run an all band dipole with a tuner in the shack you need ladder line. If you have an attic for example install the longest dipole you can and feed it with ladder line.

8 ft in the attic is plenty height for a good mobile screwdriver and if you have room for a dipole you should have room to staple down a decent amount of chicken wire for a counterpoise. In the case of the ladder line dipole just make it as long as possible and stuff it into your attic any way you can. Ladder line fed dipoles are ideal for attic use assuming that you can route the ladder line to your radio without too much metal contact. Coax is very lossy when operated at high swr.

Just make sure that both sides are equal. Why use open wire feed line for a dipole instead of coax. Well my 40m windom loads up very poorly on 80m and i m likely burning a good bit of my meager power heating the coax. Posted by brian duerr wb2jix on 26th oct 2015.

Tie in attic or any available trees at your site.