80-10 Meter W7FG True Ladder Line Open Wire Fed Dipole 125' Dipole 100' Feedline

My first Novice antenna was a 40 Meter dipole fed with home made ladder line. I graduated to 75 ohm twin lead and then discovered coax and didn't look back. Recently I experienced serious problems with RF in the shack from an EFHW antenna and went back to my roots. W7FG's ladder line antenna was pretty easy to get into the basement (I drilled another hole beside the one for my coax) and draped the feed under the joists over to my old Ten-Tec balanced/unbalanced tuner. 80-10 load up fine without any fancy settings on the tuner. No RF gremlins running around. Good signal reports 80-15 including WARCs. 30 Meters is was the hardest band to load (very sharp) but I receive good reports there too. I haven't operated on 10 yet but I have no reason to think FG's antenna won't shine there too since it will radiate most of my output signal instead of only 50 or 60%. I'm wondering if I can run it as a Marconi-T by feeding the ladder line from a single antenna post. It would take a good ground I know. But that will be a winter project. If you get one you will like it. 73 DE W4AMW

I decided to buy the W7FG open wire feed line center fed dipole as it is an ideal 80-10 dipole if fed properly. I also bought a Palstar balanced tuner to use with this antenna. The antenna is supported by a 40 ft Rohn mast and an oak tree with a pulley at 40 ft and a 15 lb weight. The two supports are 240 ft apart so the center of the dipole is at 30-35 ft. and close to the house. (The antenna wire has not stretched in the 3 months since install.) I brought the feed line into the basement shack area through our 1 ft. thick block wall. I used threaded rod and 1 1/2" PVC pipes and end caps through the wall after drilling 2" dia. holes through an air cavity in a block. I maintained the 3 1/2" wire spacing by locating the holes diagonally form one another as the air cavity would otherwise not allow the spacing. The antenna tunes everywhere on all bands from 80-6!!! The reflected power needle barely moves at 100 W out! It was easy to initially get below 1.2 : 1 at first try on 80-10 but 6m seemed impossible. I experimented over a period of days and found higher Q matches at other LC pairings. Now that reflected power needle stays very close to its rest position from 80 thru 6. The settings are stable and remains so whether the antenna and feed line are wet or dry. Amazing! The feedline was 100ft from the factory but I cut it arbitrarily to about 55 ft (I did not measure) to make it hang neatly and out of the way as it hangs down to reach the PVC feed throughs in the wall in the basement egress window well. This antenna/tuner combo exceeds expectations!

Must admit, I was not too impressed when I opened the box and took a look at the contents. Boy was I surprised and amazed. Easy to install and boy does it work! 80-10 just as advertised. Also I really appreciated the various excellent dipole reference documents made available by True Ladder.

After 60 years of ham radio I finally have my best antenna, the W7FG dipole. With my antenna tuner I can work all bands with excellent results and the price is less than if I had built it myself.

Unique construction and OWL spreaders

I had the ladder line a few years ago then switched to all coax. Now I am in MARS and need more flexibility so I got the open wire antenna again. The quality is the same as several years ago, excellent. If you like open wire and all band doublet type antenna I highly recommend this antenna. I ordered it with 100 feet of feedline, but did not need all so I trimmed it to 55 feet. Works FB with my T-Match tuner into a Balun Designs 4-1 balun. 73, Dale, K9VUJ

I've always been a fan of fan dipoles... until I sat down and realized how much power was being lost in the coax on the way to the feedpoint. I researched a little, and decided to buy this doublet with 100' of 600 ohm ladder feedline. To be honest, I wasn't expecting much. I was stunned. My fan dipole that covered 80-10 meters worked, and in my mind, worked really well. But I was wrong. Within the first few hours of hanging the new doublet, I was stunned by how well it was working for me. Hams that I talk to on 80/75 meters said I was at least 1-2 S-units better than usual (which can be a big deal when dealing with high band noise)... The performance on other bands that I had difficulty with in the past was surprising as well. The doublet is paired with a Balun Designs 4:1 balun, and is connected to my LDG AT600 autotuner with 12" of LMR400 coax. It tunes everywhere, and works on all bands 80-10.

I am really enjoying this antenna. The day that I installed the antenna, I still had my other multi-band wire antenna mounted. Both antennas went to my remote switch so I was able to move between the two antennas instantly. The True Ladder Line antenna was consistently 3 S units higher than my older antenna with window line. Some signals that I could hear on the TLL antenna were not there at all on the old antenna. When I started transmitting, I was shocked at how quickly I was able to get through the pileups. I operate mainly with 80 watts. I was making contacts on the first or second try. I never got through that easily before. Yes, running ladder line is a little more difficult than running all coax, but it has been well worth the effort for me. I am unable to bring the ladder line into my shack, but I am getting great performance with with a remote antenna switch and a 15' coax run to the tuner. I am a happy customer!

I have purchased several of the Ladder Line products and am very happy with their performance. Sometimes you just cannot improve on a time-tested product. It just works! I received the product quickly and the owner was extremely helpful and attentive. It's nice to work with a small business owner who really seems to care about pleasing his customer.