The moment of truth

 After a lot of testing and reading on baluns, I ended up removing an additional two winds on each of the coils of my 1:1 balun. The performance was not MUCH better but was something I could settle with. 

Yesterday the temperature did not venture very far above 24 degrees. This did not make the lowering of my current dipole an enjoyable experience. Furthermore I had to heat the garage for about an hour before I could stop seeing my breath whenever I exhaled. Once the garage was at a semi-comfortable environment I removed the one wavelength RG58 coax that was feeding the antenna and replaced it with my 1:1 balun. The new feedline was 50ft of LMR-400 low loss coax. This ran into the barrel connector into my office window and finally another 6ft of LMR-400 that would go to my transceiver. 

Once again, confusion ensued. I hooked the antenna analyzer up and got ridiculous readings. I am not really sure why or how I was getting these reading, But, by using the process of elimination I removed the barrel connector and additional length of 6ft or LMR-400. Another tested proved to be much better. This made me wonder if my earlier setup was plagued by the same issue. None the less I pushed forward and installed everything. Below is a table of SWR for the balun alone, the old version of the antenna with one wavelength feedline, and then finally my new setup with balun and LMR-400 feedline.

As you can see its not of monumental improvement. I even gained SWR on the upper end above 20Mhz and gained a BUNCH below 15Mhz. This doesn't really concern me as of yet. I really want to see if this reduces the amount of noise I receive and if this will still be able to pick up solar events. I would also like to try and transmit on this antenna at some point.

Another thing that bothers me a little is that the feedline and balun put a lot of weight on the center of the antenna and as a result is sags a bit. Perhaps if I move to a single antenna mast and hang the feed point from that in an inverted V fashion I could get better results.

At this point I still feel as if I am poking around in the dark to see if I can get things to work. Normally I don't mind this too much, but with the temperatures being so low and the time it takes to get everything down and up the antenna masts it really does prove to be a frustrating experience when I realize I had forgotten something before I put it all back together, Such is life I suppose.

More to come.