MFJ Wire Antenna, 160m-10m, G5RV dipole and Ham Guides TM Pocket Reference Card Bundle

G5RV HF Antenna

Covers all bands, 160-10 Meters with antenna tuner. 102 feet long, shorter than 80 Meter dipole. Use as inverted vee or sloper to be more compact. Use on 160 Meters as Marconi with tuner and ground. Handles full legal limit power. Add coax feedline -- get on the air! The G5RV antenna is a multi-band center-fed dipole antenna capable of 1500 Watts. It was originally designed to operate as a 3/2 wavelength center fed antenna for 14 MHz, but amateurs soon discovered it would offer reasonable performance on many other bands. The MFJ-1778 (G5RV) consists of a 102 foot flat top fed with a 32.5 foot 450 ohm matching section ending in an SO-239 coaxial connector. The 450 ohm balanced transmission line serves as a 1:1 transmission line transformer on 14 MHz. The SWR is approximately 2:1 at 14 MHz. The same balanced line section acts like a transmission line impedance matching section on the other HF bands. This antenna generally requires the use of a suitable matching network (antenna tuner) since the SWR of the G5RV is almost certainly not 1:1 on any band. The use of a tuner will guarantee maximum performance from solid state exciters. The G5RV is a balanced antenna that is fed by an unbalanced coaxial line. This feed system causes unwanted parallel RF currents to appear on the shield of the coaxial feedline. A choke type balun should be used with this antenna to eliminate or reduce the undesirable parallel feedline currents. Failure to use a choke balun may result in RFI, RF feedback, or other symptoms of RF "in the shack".