That certainly works as thousands of Hams over the years will attest. However with two equal length wires you are throwing away 3 dB - 1/2 of the power - in that wire on the ground. So I try to raise both wires, keeping the angle between them at least 90 degrees for as much of the run as possible.
But, in a practical installation, a 3 dB difference is seldom noticeable on the air on HF. When I'm using one end fed wire, with a wire on the ground, I try to make the one in the air as close to a half-wave as the tuner can handle. Doing that can reduce the loss in the ground wire to less than 0.5 dB. Ron AC7AC -----Original Message----- I’ve posted this before, but maybe it bears repeating: On my camping trips with the KX-1 (with autotuner) I have had very good results on all 4 bands with my simple wire antenna. I bought a 50 ft roll of stranded speaker wire at Radio Shack (I believe it was 16 or 18 ga, but I doubt that the thickness matters much). I un-zipped it to make two wires. Actual length turned out to be 51 ft 8 inches (thanks for being generous, RS!) but here, too, I doubt actual length is critical. One 50 ft wire lies on the ground. The other goes up as I high as I can get it using available supports. I’ve had it go up as a sloper to a tall tree or the light pole in a motel parking lot, or as an inverted L, and once as an inverted U over a large rock formation in AZ (admittedly, that one didn’t work terribly well). The tuner loads it up nicely and I’ve made lots of nice contacts with it. You may wish to try it. 73 Ray K2HYD KX-1 #608 ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
