A Two-Band Fan Dipole

 

A two-band dipole can be constructed by connecting together the feed point two dipoles for even harmonically related bands. It is fed with 50-ohm coax with or without a balun. The best example of this is 80 and 40-meter dipoles connected together. Both dipoles are cut for half-wave resonance on each of the two bands. They are fed together and the ends of the wires are spread apart. If the ends are close together, there will be interaction between the dipoles. In such an antenna system, both dipoles must be carefully pruned for lowest SWR one band at a time. The lower band will be tuned first since the shorter dipole will not interact with the longer one. Each dipole has a low antenna resistance on the band for which it is resonant. RF energy follows the path of least resistance, and it automatically selects which dipole will receive power. The remaining antenna will have a high impedance. High impedance will block RF. Such an antenna will have a narrower bandwidth than a single band dipole, but close to the resonant frequency of each dipole, a tuner will not be needed. To connect many dipoles for multiple bands is possible, but it is not recommended because multiple wires are prone to interact and it will be impossible to achieve a low SWR on some bands. However, on the two band model, the 40-meter dipole will resonate close to 15 meters, the 80-meter dipole will resonate close to 10 meters, and working four bands with this set-up is possible. Some hams are using this antenna successfully with a tuner on all bands, although the signal on 20 meters suffers somewhat because of high SWR.

Figure - Two-Band Fan Dipole for 40 and 75 Meters