Off Center Dipole...

[Oatmeal]

Like to hear you all's thoughts on one of these antennas, if you build it yourself, good and bad things on it....

I talked to a guy this morning on 40m and we got on this subject and he told me he has his setup on 263ft, and says he cut it in half and each leg is 131.5ft long......and went on talking something about it been resonant on 80 and 160m bands......and told me it would tune on all the bands using a external tuner, how can this be a OC dipole if each leg is the same length ?

I'm just curious if he is telling me the right info on this dipole, and thanks in advance...

 

[RatsoW8]

I can't comment on what the person you spoke to was using but I use OCF dipoles here. Both purchased locally from W8AMZ. I've been using OCF dipoles for years and they work just as well as a regular dipole as far as I can tell and can be resonant on several bands without having to use a tuner..

I have an 80-6M ZS6BKW/multi band dipole installed at 55' for my FT-DX-1200 and a 40-6M OCF at 45' on another hf rig. I can work anything I can hear and the antennas seem to hear very well.

I did build a couple of these early on but by the time you buy good components, balun and line isolator you're better off purchasing the antenna built by someone who has heavy duty components that last.

 

[Road Squawker]

I can't comment on what the person you spoke to was using but I use OCF dipoles here....I have an 80-6M ZS6BKW multi band dipole... and a 40-6M OCF at 45' on another hf rig....

sounds like you actually have one OCF, the ZS6BKW is a variant of the G5RV and is fed from the center

 

[4ZERO99]

There is nothing like building your own antennas and to have the bragging right to say so, I built my own ocf dipoles for 160 meters as well as one for 6 to 75/80 meters and if you get the lengths right they will not require a tuner for most of the bands, my worse swr is on 15 or 17 meters is 1.5 to 1, I also use the 1005 divided by the freq divided by 2 and is close to 263ft mine is at 269ft total, times .64 for the long leg and .36 for the short leg. This will get you real close to resonant and I added 6 ft to the short leg which brought the swr right in 1.2 to1 for 160 meters running 500w and when it's quiet I only use 100w with no problems of being heard.

And I know this formula is for loops but also works very well for OCF I'm proof.

just my 2 cents, your mileage may vary

 

[RatsoW8]

sounds like you actually have one OCF, the ZS6BKW is a variant of the G5RV and is fed from the center

Oops, yep you are correct. The antenna does have resonant points on 40, 20, 17 , 12 and 10 meters. Easily tuned with the internal tuner on my 1200 for 80 and 15m.

 

[Road Squawker]

yeah, I knew that you knew that, but, I wanted the OP to understand the ZS6BKW is a center fed antenna,..... and (IMO) a much better choice for multi band operations.