February 28th, 2005
20m antenna
so, i was told (thanks KT6LN!) that just because an antenna can tune with an autotuner, does NOT mean it is radiating. I kind of suspected this.. of course a dummy load can tune up.. Anyways, armed with that knowledge, I used a coathanger as a test instead of cutting up my radiating element. Much better! Better than 1.5:1 across the band with no tuner. Then, I cut the wire, and now i am waiting for the rain to let up so I can try tuning it again. Looks like the bandwidth is such that I can have ssb OR cw but not both.
