Sometimes you don't have an opportunity to choose an antenna. You can be either limited in finances or space, but the only antenna you may build is something small. Just imagine you live in a country house and have two 10-meters-tall trees with a distance of 15 meters between them, leaving you only 11-12 meters of free space for your antenna. You want to be present on 40 meters band, where the propagation does live the whole day. Since you don't want to build a ground plane, you have chosen to build the dipole. Good choice: the dipole is a pretty good and easy to build antenna requiring not so many materials. But you have realized you have no space for this antenna: diagrams tell you that the antenna must be 20 meters long. So sad...
But, don't panic! A shortened dipole is your choice. Let's try to design the shortened dipole that could fit the space between your trees!
But, don't panic! A shortened dipole is your choice. Let's try to design the shortened dipole that could fit the space between your trees!
