Quote Originally Posted by kb2vxa View Post
"I'm going to put up a vertical for 20 and possibly for 30."
As a broadcast engineer you know the advantages of a half wave vertical. You have three choices, a dipole that requires neither a tuner nor radials, an end fed that requires both and a grounded vertical folded monopole that again requires both. The grounded folded monopole if you've been following my recommendations is an electrical half wave a tad shorter than a quarter wave high so that's the way to go if you lack a high support or room for guys.

Room for guys... and I had to say that to a YL??? EEK!

Hey, if you have the formula for that one please pass it along. I saw it in the back of an old Collins broadcast transmitter catalog a long time ago but that's another thing that went bye bye when I lost my tech library and a bunch of other irreplaceable stuff in a flood... RATS! (They swam for their lives...)
I have very limited room for anything here. The verticals will be 1/4 wave. I definitely have no room for a dipole. I had one for 30 meters but it required an extraordinary amount of support to wrap it around the house and under the power lines and it did not perform that well. The verticals I can run up near the side of the house and I have plenty of stuff to use as ground. So verticals it is. If I had trees in the front yard I could run a dipole from the front yard, over the house to one of the trees in the back, but unfortunately that's not an option. A properly cut vertical won't need a tuner at least on the band it's designed for, but even if it does, that doesn't bother me. Most of my antenna's have required a tuner and really there is very little loss from using a tuner.