Years later I had another good one - a 240 footer at about 55 ft high,
going to a Drake R8a and a Yahoo Frog-A-Hunnert.
For your situation .. experiment. My experience is the longer (and
higher) the better. And with the Tun-4 you should be able to tame it
down / tweak it up as needed.
For handling the "higher is better" part - a fishing reel bolted to a
wrist-rocket slingshot with hose clamps is 2nd best. A poor man's E-Z
Hang, if you will. Hey E-Z Hang was on sale at Dayton Hamvention for
$90.00 or so. But for about $20.00 and a trip to the Wal-Mart sporting
goods department, you can make one that works fine.
First best - an archery fishing reel attached to a good hunting bow.
Awesome results if you're a decent archer.
Ok .. the *real* first best is a Lyle gun and a few thousand feet of
rope - but this might be overkill. :-)
> For your situation .. experiment. My experience is the longer (and
> higher) the better. And with the Tun-4 you should be able to tame it
> down / tweak it up as needed.
Experiment, experiment, experiment. Best advice yet. I'd take higher
over longer. I 'spearminted with 1/4 - wavelength verticals with an
elevated feed this spring, and am really surprised. Get 'em 20 feet
off of the ground, and make 'em out of wire. I've been using one with
4 radials for 30 Meter Ham and 31 Meter Shortwave use, and have
found it works really well from about 5 MHz to about 22 MHz for
receive purposes. Barring that, if you're going with a longwire
horizontal,
longer really is better, and get it as high as you can.
> For handling the "higher is better" part - a fishing reel bolted to a
> wrist-rocket slingshot with hose clamps is 2nd best. A poor man's E-Z
> Hang, if you will. Hey E-Z Hang was on sale at Dayton Hamvention for
> $90.00 or so. But for about $20.00 and a trip to the Wal-Mart sporting
> goods department, you can make one that works fine.
I thougth I was the only one doing that! Here's another good'n. Skip the
slingshot, get a deluxe el-cheapo Zebco 202 or 404 fishin' combo from Wally
World (tm), and put a half - ounce sinker on the end of the line. Cast it
into the
highest tree, and the sinker will drop down to the ground. Clip off the
sinker,
attach wire to the end, and pull it up through the tree. Presto! A nice
folded
vertical that will work really well for shortwave purposes. Oh, yeah....use
well-insulated wire.
73,
Steve
"If you are going through hell, keep going."
-- Winston Churchill
Once a random-wire gets beyond 1-2 wavelengths long it will start taking
on "longwire" characteristics, namely being directional, low-angle, and
a tad of gain in the direction the wire points. Reception off the sides
and rear may be diminished.
If you can utilize this to your advantage then by all means, go for more
length.
-ex
Frank
Frank
I got to this thread after several people already made good suggestions
but to answer your question directly a random wire that is not cut to a
specific frequency and is intended for reception over a range of
frequencies. The 80 foot wire qualifies.
The other question of why the 80 foot wire is not working as well in the
new location could have a number of reasons. The wire is half an antenna
where the other half is ground so you may not have as good a ground at
the new place. The soil conductivity may be worse at the new place. This
could be made better with a more extensive ground system. An alternative
is to make a complete antenna that does not need ground.
--
Telamon
Ventura, California
"RHF" <rhf-new...@pacbell.net> wrote in message
news:1117663795.7...@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
http://www.hard-core-dx.com/nordicdx/antenna/wire/beverage/index.html
Many different opinions..
- also this . .