Ham Radio Forum

Sell that tuner or pack it away if you only work 80 meters. The RTV80 is flat across the entire band including CW. Now you know I'm "out to lunch" to make that statement. Over a year ago KC4TAQ and I, W4QJP, began an on-line search for what we thought must exist as the idea was so simple. As far as we could determine, no one ever tried this design. The idea was to fold back the ends of the inverted V or dipole for any given frequency you want to operate. Did I mention it was simple and isn’t that how we tune most wire antennas, so what’s so new about that? We do it from in the shack with the flip of a switch. Neither of us is technically inclined so I can't speak to the use of matching devices, but we connect the coax direct to the antenna. Sam added a 40 meter wire to his RTV80 and doesn't use a tuner on either band. Find all the information you will need to build your own at http://sstowers.com/rtv80. We would like to hear from anyone who builds one or wants to build one.
W4QJP

That is an interesting way make an antenna tunable. Something similar could be done with other types of antennas to make them remotely adjustable. It certainly beats having to repeatedly cut and test different element lengths.