majoco wrote:
Do away with coax cable! Open wire feeder fed from the balanced output of your shack tuner and all is good - just what was done in the 50's - the tuner then tunes the antenna and the feeder - you can't make 50ohm coax into anything else with a tuner - you may end up getting a very large voltage node somewhere down the coax and - poof.
+1 Martin! A Center Fed Zepp with 450 ohm feedline and a nice transmatch will give you multi-band capability with one antenna.
There are two drawbacks though (which I think are minor)
First, the lobes can get a bit weird the further you get from your lowest frequency. My CFZ is cut for 40M. It works well on 40, 30, 20, and 17M. Not so well on 12M. A friend of mine who has had a pair of CFZs at his QTH for years has observed this also. I've found my coax fed 160M INV-L used with an UNUN hears better on 12M than my CFZ.
Second, if you elect to buy a modern no-tune radio, then by using an external transmatch you will loose the push button tuning capability -- you can't use the on-board auto-tuner with an external transmatch.
I use a Heathkit SA-2060 tuner with my CFZ. They are not cheap, but they are good.