By G. E. "Buck" Rogers Sr;  K4ABT

In September of 1949, I was tired of climbing poles and trees to move, remove, add, or change my single-band HF antenna's.  I had used single band dipoles and doublets for almost every HF Amateur band.  I had tried a few "long-wire" and Zepps, but again, operation was restricted to single band operation, maybe two bands at most.

I had heard of the "Windom" and read a few articles about the Windom, but most of my thoughts were ... ho-hum.. just another dipole fed a bit off-center.  Then one evening at a meeting of the GARC in the old "Sea Scouts" club house near the Coosa River in Gadsden, Alabama; I heard some of my "elmers" Gale Caudle (then W4CFB), Jack Kennamer W4YPC, Bob Bynum W4USM, Vic W4CWF, Ed Elkins W4CDI, Homer Dupree W4OZK... and others discussing the Windom all-band HF antenna.  It was only when Jack mentioned using one (Windom) antenna on most all HF bands...  "without an antenna tuner"  that my ears went directional!

It was that last phrase that really caught my attention.  "most all HF bands, without an antenna tuner....etc"  What !  A multi-band HF antenna without a tuner?   Surely I had been blessed. 

To think that I could put up a Windom, and no longer have to climb the poles and trees to hang another (single band) HF antenna was great news to my ears.  To be able to use it without an antenna tuner was icing-on-the-cake.  For a kid without any extra funds, an antenna tuner was a luxury that I could not afford.  Even my transmitter was a single 807 rig built on an Atwater-Kent radio chassis, given to me by my grand-father.

In those days, a BALUN was unheard of.  My Elmer's described, a means of connecting my coax to the off-center fed antenna using a nine (9) turn coil of the coax feed-line, at the feed point, to form a "de-coupling" loop.  The de-coupling loop provided a crude means of matching the feed coax to the antenna, and at the same time, it would reduce the "re-radiation" along the outside (shield) of the coax.

Today we have toroid cores and BALUN devices that provide a more efficient means of coupling RF energy to the antenna (reducing the VSWR), while performing better impedance matching.  In the drawing shown above, I've drawn the exact dimensions of the Windom I built in 1949.  The only differences in my Windom of 1949 and today are:

1) the material the insulators are made of, and
2) I've substituted a 4 to 1 BALUN for the 9 turn, 8 inch diameter, decoupling loop.