160 m dipole, fed with the ladder line and coupled with a matchbox you pick up at the next hamfest. Maybe you can trade the balun for it.
Printable View
160 m dipole, fed with the ladder line and coupled with a matchbox you pick up at the next hamfest. Maybe you can trade the balun for it.
Fuck all that other stuff--just build an isotropic radiator and be done with it.
I built one, but I forgot to attach the transmission line and now I can no longer find it.Quote:
Originally Posted by KJ6BSO
I do have one of those Yazoo Tenna Toonurs with a connection for balanced line. Add to the equation, 90' of 300 twinlead, probably to be used on the ends to make up for short footage of the windowline.Quote:
Originally Posted by W1GUH
Just went over my stock of rope. I need to get more. Although I only need 100' sections to hold the wire in place, it takes a 200' section to get the job done. 3 points will require 600'. The trees are right and I just mowed the lawn for the last time this year. (did not forget the Stabil™)
Quote:
Originally Posted by KG4CGC
We'll see about that.
Where I live, it's not uncommon to have to mow the lawn in freakin' February.
Unless we start hitting 80's consistently and get some serious regular rain, it will not grow anymore until Spring. Yer talkin' to a 42 year resident. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by W3MIV
Hold the phone. Sounds like with all the room you could do a rhombic or vee-beam? If so, screw everything else and do that!
125 linear feet from the main support mast east to west. 80m 40m fan dipole peaking at 80 feet in height at the end of the wire. I will have to get creative with the other half of the dipole. It will probably run north south for 36 feet then turn southwest for another 36' and maybe I don't know what after that.
Does this a folded dipole make for 160m? 125.5 feet west with 450 ohm windowline then capped with a 125.5 section of windowline in folded dipole fashion. Halfwave feedline, halfwave of folded dipole. It will reach a peak height of near 85 feet. The folded dipole section will probably droop in the north and south direction.
Next will be a simple vertical for 15/17m.
It would be great if I could run some wire in the front yard. The big lot next door belongs to the neighbors so, no wire in that yard.Quote:
Originally Posted by W1GUH
I've heard good things about folded dipoles made with ladder line. Go for it.
OK. Let's look at the numbers for the folded dipole for 160m. 125.5 + 125.5 while theoretically is a half wavelength when added together, will it resonate the way I hope it will in this configuration?
Resonance is over-rated.Quote:
Originally Posted by KG4CGC
Get as much wire as you can fit in the space allotted, feed it with ladder line, and put the fscking thing up. You're dragging this out far too much, IMO.
To paraphrase Voltaire, "Don't let perfect be the enemy of good enough."
There is rope on the trees! I'm making progress!
Dragging it out? Yeah, I have some of those messed up head characteristics where I can keep running the same idea in my head while making slight changes and looking at the outcome but, the proper outcome depends on the proper input. It keeps me in dopamine.
Complete agreement with that! Just get it up. Not only does "resonance" mean diddly when you're feeding with balanced line, even with a "resonant" dipole fed with coax you can never predict the length from formulas, so you're gonna have to prune it anyway. Just make sure you make it too long to start with.Quote:
Originally Posted by KJ3N
OK. Like I said OTA, by the end of the week.
The only good reason to delay putting up an antenna is to wait for bad enough wx. It's a known, proven scientific fact that antennas that are put up in the dead of winter, preferably during an ice storm will work much, much better and last much, much longer than those put up in warm dry wx.
It's been my experience that scheduling a day to put up an antenna, especially if you've asked friends to come over to help, will inevitably bring on inclement weather.
Tis easier to pull kinks and knots through bare branches with a little wet on them than full foliage. I was approaching the limits of 30# test pulling the rope back through. LOL!
One of the reasons I've spent so much time thinking about this is because it will be the biggest wire antenna project for me to date, as well as the highest.
8' surf rod has been much more successful for me than the slingshot of yore!
I have a good recipe for red drum if you come across any.
Got a "kids fishing for squirrels" story if you want to hear it. A little sad though, for the squirrel.Quote:
Originally Posted by W3MIV
Rain past three days here. Thursday is going to be mast drop day.
Red Drum? I thought that was a medical condition that went with beer nuts or cotton balls.
Update: I've managed to bend two 10' sections of heavy duty, thick wall antenna mast.
Plan B: I have 2 more 10' sections and a 10' section of 1.75" galvanized steel water pipe. I'm going to slide the sections into the steel pipe and put it up with only a device to raise and lower the wire antenna and balun. Like a flag pole.
I think part of my problem today was the weight of the wire and the fact that the coax is inside the mast tubes. I'll raise the section inside the galvanized tube once it is up. A little grunt should get it done. This will diminish about 8 feet of the overall original height that I started with. Whatever right?
An addendum: The wire, I thought for some strange reason that I had 500' of 10 gauge wire. Well, it is actually 250' of 8ga. Wow, right?
I've had it for years and was saving it for marriage.
Or from watching "The Shining" [click] too many times. :mrgreen:Quote:
Originally Posted by K7SGJ
Well call me stupid but it makes sense now. My plans for an 80m ant turned out to be a 160. I don't know if that's good or bad but I'll leave it as is for a while. Tomorrow I'll measure out the window line and check the coax going to the 10m ant. I think the center conductor (or something) broke at the ant connector.
http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c7...9/af8fac23.jpg
Hmmm... something about that image that I really like Paul... ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by W1GUH
Charles, you should be able to tune up that antenna for 80m just fine, although the pattern might not be as good as you'd like. Do you have a field strength meter to check it out? If you don't like the pattern you can always try putting in a pair of traps.Quote:
Originally Posted by KG4CGC
160 is one of the HF bands that has such a wide bandwidth that the useful wire antenna bandwidth is only about 100kHz or so.
I use a 1/4 wave shorted stub at the feed point on mine and it gives me about 200kHz or so of relatively flat bandwidth. Easy and cheap to make out of TV twin lead with a 259B analyzer. Line impedance doesn't matter much since it's infinite at the design frequency with a shorted stub. The stub appears inductive as you go down in frequency and capacitative as you go up. Artificially lengthens and shortens your antenna accordingly. And, you can just let the stub dangle in the breeze.
Ah, about dangling in the breeze, that's on Saturday nights!
The original wire I had up is still louder on most bands except 160. It is even louder than the 160m ant on AMBCB.
I need to test these some time with a willing Island participant.
Yesterday I took down the 10m ant and saw where the outer jacket of the cable slipped about a eighth of an inch. It looked the most suspect as I tested for continuity and shorts and weird impedances. I cut off that end and tested it again and the problem was solved so I got out the torch and removed the old end and cleaned and prepped it for remounting. While I had everything down and apart, I went ahead and "refreshed" the other PL-259. Everything went back together and works fine business. I am considering raising this ant a few more feet as the present coax will allow.
Today I'm going to see what I can do with all the 450Ω window line. (doublet folded dipole configuration) It's going to have to go over the black walnut tree and I suppose the dipole configuration will have to droop. I really want this one to be best on 80m. I want it to hear better than the wire I've been using on 80 because if that is the best I can do with wire on 80 then I am really confused LOL! (and I am)