A hunk of wire if its long enough will be much more efficient than the PAC12 ever could be.  The PAC12 will work but requires being tuned to frequency to work properly, but a wire of 33' to 130' fed with a tuner will work much much better.  If you want store bought, there are tons of ready made wire antennas out there and you have lots of trees to hang them from, you will be more pleased with the operation of these than you would that puny little PAC12 !  With antennas, BIGGER IS BETTER !

Must be due to the surroundings, my swr on 20 is perfect, so is 40, 17, 12, and part of 10. On 80 it starts low at 3.5 MHz and is almost 4:1 at 4 mhz.

Anyway, got time to put the microweight OCF together and hang it up long enough to sweep it on the MFJ-259B and the swr is around 2.5:1 on 40, 20,15 & 10 meters, around 3:1 on 12 and 17 meters.  The wires are presently at 13' and 54' and I may be able to get the swr lower by adjusting the wire lengths.  At any rate, its close enough that he tuner in the Icom 703 will knock it down to nothing on all bands and that includes 30 & 60 meters !

Quote from: gil on September 16, 2016, 05:53:09 PM
Mine is 44+89ft.
Gil

My 80M OCF is also 44' & 89' with a dual core guanella current balun wound on FT240-61 cores.  But I didn't get so lucky on 15M where the swr is 5:1 across the band.

What was the title of that thread Gil ?

Quote from: gil on September 16, 2016, 01:52:55 PM
It should be, but surprisingly no.. I will test more soon.. I think the SWR was high on 15 but not overly so.. I can't find my notes.. It will undoubtedly work fine with a tuner. So far the antenna seems pretty efficient. Still no contacts with the US though, depressing.. I am looking forward to Lamewolf's report..

Gil

Gil,
I looked at my graph on my 80M OCF and the SWR on 15 was around 5:1 which is fairly normal but it was a flat 5:1 across the band.

BTW, I meant to add that to get 15 meters on an 80M OCF you have a couple of options.  One is to use a voltage balun to feed a standard 45/90 split antenna and the voltage balun will allow the feedline to radiate but put a good 1:1 choke 22' below the voltage balun to make that portion of the feedline resonant on 15 meters - this is called a "Carolina Windom". I do not like a radiating feedline if I can help it but it does work.  The other option is to use a different offset, and with something like a 25' - 109' offset, 15 meters will work too but does cause and imbalance that would normally cause feedline radiation, but that can be cured with a good 1:1 guanella current balun connected between the coax and the 4:1 balun and the 4:1 and 1:1 can be built into the same box if you wish.  This will allow 15 meter operation but also assures that the antenna is radiating the signal and not your coax !  And that's what I plan on with my microlight 40 OCF.  It will use lengths around 17.4' and 55.6' and should cover 40, 20, 15, & 10 meters without a tuner plus 12, 17, & 6 meters with a tuner but 12, 17, and 6 meters should have a low enough swr to still be fairly efficient and not too much loss on it.  As long as the swr is 3:1 or under, the losses aren't really all that high and the antenna will still work well when using a tuner.  And the super thin RG316 coax (about the same diameter of RG174) is still fairly low loss and from what I've read will handle a lot of power !  But I'm using it to save weight since I will only be running around 10 watts through it.

The swr on 15M on an 80m OCF is usually pretty high unless you do and sever off center split on the order of 17% & 83% then you get a lot of common mode current due to the severe imbalance but that's what the choke is for.  But with the old 1/3 to 1/4 offset, 15M is usually unusable without a tuner.  So is 30 meters.  My 80 meter OCF is usable on 80, 40, 20, 17, 12, 10 and 6 meters but has the old style split of about 45' and 90'.

The pole won't hold anything real heavy but is made to hold a wind sock like you see at airports and on beaches.  A lightweight doublet made from #20 speaker wire and fed with 300 ohm TV twinlead is the heaviest antenna I've ever hung on it and it did ok but with a little bow in the top section.  The best use I've found for it is to hold the vertical section of an EFHW when setup as an inverted L or just a vertical wire the same length of the pole fed at the bottom with a tuner or a unun/tuner combo  It does need some sort of mount at the base to support it with and I have a steel plate with a tube on it that the pole slides into and I can use gutter spikes to pin it to the ground or I can simply park one tire of my suv on it to anchor it.  One ham I saw used a "BIG" screwdriver that would fit up inside the base of the pole and he just drove that in the ground and slid the pole down over its handle.  They are handy to have and collapse down to 44 inches for travel so it could be tied on the side of a backpack if needed.  They also make a good fishing pole ! :)

Going to go ahead and build my microlight off center fed dipole to use with my Icom 703 and its built in ATU.  The balun will be a 3 core design using three FT50-43 cores.  Two of them will be wound as a 2 core guanella current balun and the third will form a 1:1 choke and all be mounted on a fiberglass board for the center insulator and then seal with liquid tape, and use some very flexible #20 rubber insulated wire a friend gave me for the antenna sections.  It will be fed through 33' of RG316 coax that I ordered and terminated into a BNC connector.  Using the BNC so it can also be used with a couple of small QRP homebrew tuners that I use with my Yaesu FT-817.  The balun will probably handle around 20 watts at most but that's ok as the 703 is a 10 watt rig and the 817 is a 5 watt rig.  But I know the ATU in the 703 will handle it just fine on all bands 10 thru 40 if it does need an ATU.  I will initially make the antenn for 10 thru 40 meters but may also make up a set of extender wires to make it work also on 60 & 80 meters when needed.  The antenna will be supported for portable use by my 31' Jackite telescopic pole as an inverted V.  Should prove out to work quite well even at 10 watts !

Quote from: cockpitbob on September 09, 2016, 11:24:44 AM
LOL, I had a similar experience.  I think those MFJ tuners with dummy loads leak some out the antenna when set to dummy load.  I was just practicing my CQ into the dummy load one day and someone replied.

It was an MFJ tuner I was using too !  I even added a binding post to the back panel on one of my MFJ tuners that connects to the dummy load so I could connect a random wire to it.  I use this sometimes when just listening to help cut down on the noise but it works on transmit too.

To a point Gil the dummy load on the end of a coax will work, but put a coax T fitting on the dummy load, connect the radio to one side of the T and a random wire to the other and it will a lot better because the random wire would not be shielded.  I've actually done this before just to see how it would work and it did better than I expected !

QRPp also works Ray.  I got on 40 meters once with my Yaesu FT-817 and thought the band sounded unusually quiet and then I hear a CQ call that is very clear.  I answer the call because its one I've worked before just to say hello and he is about 30 miles away.  He informs me that I was very weak and gives me a 339 report and thats when I realized the switch on the tuner was set to the dummy load and while he was sending I switched to the antenna and his signal just about blows me out of the chair !  When I returned, he thought I had switched on an amp !  I was running 2 watts !

Well I have already built something similar and that's why I already have the 9:1 unun that I built.  The other antenna was a vertical half rombic that had the 9:1 at one end and a 450 ohm terminating resistor at the other end - <2:1 swr from 160 to 10 meters  from a 100' wire.  It is deployed as an inverted V with the center supported at 30' and the ends close to ground and connected to ground - worked much better than I thought it would even with a measely 5 watts from my Yaesu FT-817 !

I guess you are right about it not being an end fed, but it is supposed to be less than 2:1 swr from 2 to 30 mhz.  And yes, its probably not very efficient but would be quick to deploy. I have a 9:1 unun I built and I have the wire and the resistor and plenty of metal tent stakes to use as the ground spike, now all I need is to find the time to put it all together and try it out.

http://vk6ysf.com/hf_tactical_%20antenna.htm

Anyone tried or experimented with the type of antenna above ?  Thinking of trying to build one just for kicks.