I used the same antenna setup, coat hanger and all, only difference was I used 3/4" electric tape and mastic and a thin wooden rod for each end.
On the radio everybody gave me flak once I said I was using a horizontal dipole. Any time I said the word dipole on the air I get a dozen responses telling me about 1/4"ground planes, 5/8"wave, beams and etc.
I know its no-gain, I used dipoles in the past for shortwave rx and CB, my radio does 80watts, it has a nice low profile with no ground plane needed, it looks good in a tree, and last but not least, it has a flat angle of radiation, which is a nice thing when your station is on a mountain 4,000' above sea level.
A few things I learned from the dipole was,
Initially, it was reflecting alot of power back to the radio, but when attached to the analyzer SWR was <1.5:1. I had the coax going to the antenna at about a 45' angle like in your setup, but then it ran straight down to the ground. I suspect it was feeding back into the coax so I reoriented the coax so it went in horizontally out from antenna and added another coat hanger to keep the line back from the antenna. This fixed it.
I had a very low SWR after trimming with antenna just a few feet off the ground, but once pulled up in the tree it went up to around 1.6 or so.
I cant tune it 30' up in a tree, so I took it down and checked SWR from about 8' off the ground on a ladder and SWR was the same, so I trimmed it a bit more and got much better, around 1.1 or 1.2.
So it looks like impedance of a dipole is affected by its height off the ground, especially when its less than 1 wavelength off the ground.
I am curious if you had any similar issues?
73s
