RG-8 would have no advantage over RG-11.

The 4:1 balun in the 949E is a small voltage balun. You might also want to take a husky external 1:1 current-choke-balun with you.

His particular "pseudo-G5RV antenna", i.e. 110' dipole fed with 20' of twinlead, only works well on 80m, 30m, and 20m. On all other HF bands, the SWR on the coax ranges from 15:1 to 72:1.

It a little more complicated than "0 reactance". At any point in a conjugately matched system, if the impedance looking toward the load is R+jX then for a conjugate match to exist the impedance looking toward the source must be R-jX. Those two reactances still exist but since they are equal in magnitude and opposite in sign their effects cancel just as they do in an LC series resonant circuit.

If your coax is reasonably short, I wouldn't worry about any SWR lower than about 6:1 which you can measure by putting your tuner in bypass mode. OTOH, if your tuner is an internal tuner inside your transceiver, you probably need to trim the antenna so the SWR is less than 3:1.

Let's state some principles to see where the confusion is coming from. From The IEEE Dictionary:

"resonance (5)(A) (radio-wave propagation) The rapid increase or decrease of the (signal) amplitude as the excitation frequency approaches one of the natural frequencies of the system."

For resonance, we must have an inductive reactance and a capacitive reactance that are equal in absolute magnitude such that energy is being exchanged between the two types of reactances. In other words, the two different types of reactances are neutralizing each other such that the total reactance in the system adds up to zero leaving one with a pure resistance. That's what we are doing when we adjust a tuner for a 50 ohm Z0-match at the tuner input. In a low-loss system, when we achieve that Z0-match, we are causing the signal amplitudes to peak at the antenna thus radiating the maximum available power.

An ideal dummy load presents a purely resistive impedance but is not resonant because it does not meet the above definition.

The purely resistive value at resonance can have any value, e.g. 1 ohm, 10 ohms, 50 ohms, 100 ohms, ... There is nothing magic about 50 ohms.

Almost all SWR meters are calibrated for 50 ohms and the SWR reading will be 1:1 only when a value of 50 ohms exists. A 1 ohm resonant circuit will indicate a 50:1 reading on an SWR meter. A 100 ohm resonant circuit will indicate a 2:1 reading on an SWR meter. A 50 ohm SWR meter is worthless for determining resonance except for a 50 ohm value at resonance, i.e an SWR meter cannot be used to detect resonance at any other resonant resistive value except 50 ohms.

A grid dip meter can be used to detect resonance at virtually any resonant resistive value.

On a 50 ohm SWR meter, a resonant value of 10 ohms will indicate an SWR of 5:1. With a non-resonant value of 20+j20 ohms, it will indicate an SWR of 3:1, i.e. a non-resonant value of impedance can give a lower SWR reading that a resonant circuit.

Point is: When we adjust our antenna systems for lowest SWR, we may not be adjusting them to resonance.

An ideal system-wide conjugate match exists only in a lossless system which is impossible in the real world.

A system-wide near-conjugate match can exist in a low-loss real world system.

High losses in a real-world system prevent a system-wide conjugate match from being achieved. For instance, if the resonant impedance looking into the transmission line is one ohm, almost half the power from the transmitter will be dissipated in the tuner and a lot more in the coax with the 50:1 SWR.

Hopefully, I have touched on the source of the confusion.

I apologize if I appeared to disagree with you. I was just expanding the thread to the other part of the antenna system that tends to get ignored. Lots of good things happen between the tuner and the antenna when we "make the transmitter happy". If the antenna is happy when it is radiating the maximum amount of RF, we might even say, "a tuner also makes the antenna happy".

That article has been revised and posted on my web page at:

http://www.w5dxp.com/OWT1.htm

The confusion seems to be between two types of matches, an impedance match and a conjugate match, and they are not the same when reactance is present.

If we are dealing purely with resistance values, an impedance match and a conjugate match are the same thing because the reactance is zero.

If we are dealing with reactive loads, an impedance match and a conjugate match are essentially the opposite of each other.

An impedance match implies an SWR of 1:1 but does not result in maximum power transfer when the reactance is not zero.

A conjugate match implies maximum power transfer but does not result in an SWR of 1:1 when the reactance is not zero.

Here's the tricky part. When we adjust our antenna tuners for a 50 ohm match to the transmitter, we have adjusted the conditions between the transmitter output and the tuner input to a resistance-only condition and thus have achieved both an impedance match and a conjugate match between the transmitter output the tuner input. The impedance looking into the tuner input is 50+j0 ohms and the impedance looking back into the transceiver (during receive) is 50-j0 ohms. That is both a conjugate match and an impedance match so maximum power transfer is occurring.

Let's say the impedance looking into the transmission line at the antenna output terminal is 100+j200 ohms which is clearly an impedance mismatch for 50 ohm coax. The SWR on the coax is 10.4:1. But that 50 ohm Z0-match at the tuner has an amazing effect. If the tuner is lossless and we measure the impedance looking back into the tuner output terminals (during receive) we will measure 100-j200 ohms. Thus, even when the SWR is 10.4:1, we have achieved maximum power transfer because the tuner is providing a conjugate match. This happens automatically when the tuner is adjusted for a 100+j200 ohm to 50 ohm impedance transformation.

Note that in the real world when losses are present, we are only achieving a near-conjugate match. As a rule-of-thumb, I consider anything withing 10% of an ideal conjugate match to be a near-conjugate match. That only occurs in low-loss systems.

We are always striving for a conjugate match at the tuner output. The only time we settle for an impedance match at the tuner output is when the reactance is zero in which case (and only in that particular case) an impedance match and a conjugate match reduce to the same thing.

Also note that in an ideal lossless system, a conjugate match at any single point in the system implies a conjugate match at every single point in the system. In the real world, we can only come close to that ideal condition because of system losses but we can achieve a conjugate match at a single point in the system which is usually at the tuner input when we adjust for the 50 ohm Z0-match. The fact that same 50 ohms is also an impedance match seems to be the confusing part.

For what it's worth, I had the same problem and solved it in a different way that doesn't require a high-power tuner:

http://www.w5dxp.com/notuner.htm

That is the SWR on the three feet of coax between the transmitter and the tuner input and has nothing to do with the actual SWR between the tuner output and the antenna. If one wants to know the actual SWR on the 50 ohm coax between the tuner and the antenna, one needs to install an SWR meter between the tuner and the antenna. One way to do that is to set the transmitter and tuner to a low power level, put the tuner in bypass mode, and measure the actual SWR at the tuner output.

I have an IC-756PRO with a built-in autotuner. I also have an Autek WM-1 SWR meter on my transceiver output so I will always know what SWR the autotuner is having to deal with.

When the tuner "matches the load", the antenna system is resonant by IEEE definition. The random length of wire winds up being one component in a resonant antenna system just as the caps and coils in the tuner are components in the resonant antenna system. Such can be proven by using a grid dip meter on the random length of antenna wire after the tuner is properly adjusted. Assuming the receiver has a 50 ohm input impedance, the GDO will indicate a resonant dip very close to the transmitter frequency after the tuner has achieved a match.

http://www.w5dxp.com/OWT1.htm

More like a third option - 1. internal vs 2. external vs 3. remote. A good remote tuner indeed does alleviate the coax line losses due to SWR. Here is such an antenna:

http://www.w5dxp.com/vert4010.htm

Technically, a remote tuner is also external, but most hams would assume the context of an "external tuner" being located in the shack between the transmitter and the transmission line.

Why can't you run a 16.5' horizontal wire in both directions and have a normal dipole? Or if you can run a 16.5' wire horizontal and another 16.5' wire vertical, you can have a resonant bent dipole. Or figure out how to run a 25' horizontal wire along with an 8' vertical counterpoise and have an off-center-fed resonant dipole.

Mostly a moot point with those maximum SWR=3:1 internal tuners. If an internal tuner can match the impedance, it's not a big mismatch and therefore probably efficient. The biggest advantage that an external tuner has is the much wider range of impedances that it will match. So which is better, an inefficient external tuner or an internal tuner that cannot achieve a match?

Note that a 500pf cap is not a perfect SWR=1:1 solution. A variable cap would result in better SWRs across a wider bandwidth. That's what I'm going to try next when I get time. Maybe 300pf fixed in parallel with a 100pf variable would be better.