Ham Radio Help Desk

Ham Question: Coax Loss and Remote Tuner for 43 Foot Antenna

A reader asks…

I am thinking about getting a 43′ vertical to use on 160 to 10 meters.

Has anyone calculated the coax loss for 100 feet of RG-213 coax, especially on 80 and 160 meters?

Would it be beneficial to build a remote tuner [like below] and place it at the base of the 43′ antenna to reduce coax loss?

Remotely Tuned 43 Foot Vertical Antenna

Tags: 43 foot, tuner

This entry was posted on Friday, January 23rd, 2009 at 224 UTC and is filed under Antennas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

One Response to “Ham Question: Coax Loss and Remote Tuner for 43 Foot Antenna”

1. kx4o on January 23rd, 2009 at 433 UTC

   A remote tuner is the way to go, but for now I going to use the 4:1 balun and just deal with the losses whatever they may be.

   For the Virginia QSO Party I hope this will be a major antenna, but won’t be the only one so I can take the risk.

   Your drawing of a remote tuner is beautiful. The devil is in the details, of course, but this classic matcher design should do ok. I am not sure the pot on the motor for the adjustable inductor will do much to help understand multiple turns. You could just adjust it blind for minimum SWR and not worry about absolute values.

   As we have shown on other posts on this site, the 43 foot antenna is less than ideal for 10, 12, 15 meters… 17 too perhaps. 20 it should do well. 40 and 80 are workable. It should be pretty weak on 160 meters and may challenge your tuner beyond its limits. Worth a try though.

   Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

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