New Owner Asks Me To Remove Antenna

[KB2WIG]

 "  But I need advice how to cut down a tree.  "


Hire someone.....

This isn't something ya want to screw around with if you are going to ask how to do it.  'Course, ya gotta learn somehow.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFTOlmCijjs


klc

[KA2DZT]

Get a rope around it up high enough and tie it off in the direction you want it to fall.  Cut it most of the way through and then pull the rope to get it leaning in the right direction.  Then finish cutting.  Easier with two people, one pulling, one cutting.

Fred

[K5UJ]

Hey Rob
I am on a 1.1 acre lot. 100 feet wide by 600 feet.

 

I guess I am not understanding.  You have gobs of room.  Why are you mucking around with a weirdass unbalanced looking endfed-ish antenna.  I guess I am showing my bias towards regular boring balanced center fed dipoles and inverted Ls.   regular old basic simple stuff.    You could put up separate dipoles on 40 and 80 and an inverted L on 160 with all the room you have.  Anyway, I'm sure you'll wind up with something that works out.  From my experience, linear loading, traps, stubs, capacitors, bazookas, baluns, "carolina" windoms, mystery antennas, G5RVs, inverted Vs etc. etc. never do better than a high center fed flat top 1/2 w. dipole up high.  GL

Rob

P.s. did I say up high?     Merry Christmas

[flintstone mop]

Hi gang
The antenna I have been using has always been full length. I was using shorter distance trees in a sort of VEE config. and the ends of the wires were pulled down as loading wires.
NOW she's FLAT:
I pulled up the FULL length dipole partially to see if there was going to be interference from a tree. And I confirmed that the tree has to come down. I'm not going to do those acrobatics to get the wire half-assed up and then it gets hung up. While it was experimental it looked beautiful! FULL length and FLAT. I need additional OWL.
During the Summer I was playing with the thought of an inverted "L" and got an eazy-sling shot to the very top of a 70 foot pine on the edge of a neighbor's yard. Waaaay back on his property. Same size as mine. 100' X 600' long. I asked him for permission to do this. And I do not know why I did not do this before. I thought I was losing my mind 6 yrs ago when we moved here and my thought processes were screwed up. (retiring after 40yrs, newly wed,a baby on the way, and health issues developing, moving to Pa.)

Rob: I agree with you. A plain ole dipole is much simpler. Looking at the linear loaded picture on my first post, does not say much for a balanced antenna. But if that is a Cebik design, then it could possibly work. Cebik seemed to be an 'out of the box' thinker. Seems like unusual designs scare people away.

Kevin/WIG the video is very good. I do not see why I can't do it myself. It's not a very big tree. And the 70 degree cut in the direction of fall, looks like easy to do. Monday another neighbor said he would help cut it down.
I can't wait to hook her up and really get on the air........160M.
Fred

[AB3L]

Food for thought: locally there is a new bridge on a Rails to Trails line that was dedicated to a deceased member of that community. He was an Ironworker. Not killed on the job, he was cutting down a tree for his sister and it went bad. He wrestled things for a living but this was not his specialty.
Hire someone to get it down, you cut it up. Safer that way if you are in doubt. I've heard the Amish are great tree cutters.

[flintstone mop]

Food for thought: locally there is a new bridge on a Rails to Trails line that was dedicated to a deceased member of that community. He was an Ironworker. Not killed on the job, he was cutting down a tree for his sister and it went bad. He wrestled things for a living but this was not his specialty.
Hire someone to get it down, you cut it up. Safer that way if you are in doubt. I've heard the Amish are great tree cutters.

Advice is valuable and I do not need unexpected bad things to happen. A neighbor who has taken down trees said he would help Monday. And yes the Amish are always close by. Things mounted vertical going horizontal become unpredictable.
TNX

[W4AAB]

Yes, they do!! The worst thing I have run into is cutting into a tree trunk and find out it has hollowed out from the inside. Once it gets cut into far enough, the tree can go any which way when it falls. Good luck with getting the tree cut so you can get that wire up where you want it. It is great to have some help. I am getting where it is hard to find knowledgeable help.

[k4kyv]

PROGRESS!!!

But I need advice how to cut down a tree. Some of the 'junk' growth in my back yard. Probably an Elm about 40 feet high. Looks like two separate shoots.
How to cut it down to fall in a specific direction so, clean up is easier and it does not fall into another tree. This is not a crowded woods setting. I see a path that it can easily fall, but how to get it to do that is the question.

http://forestry.about.com/od/chainsaws/ss/fell_tree.htm


Or, here's the 3878 kc/s method.  If you do it that way, be sure to follow through to the final step.

http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Cut-Down-a-Tree/

[WBear2GCR]

Fred, the developer has bought parcels around your place?

Time to contact him and find out if he wants your parcel as well.
Sorry to let you know this, but it sounds like it is time to move!

My 2 cents worth.

                    _-_-bear

[flintstone mop]

The tree is down and the aerial is up, in all of its beauty. It's been a long time to see a flat top antenna. Windy days, she'll move around some.
I'll start routing the OWL and wait for the additional line to connect to the shack.
The WX might be good for antennas. 36 high and snow showers.

Hey 'Bear,
There is a "paper road" between my house and the proposed new neighbor. So, that separates me from them by 100 feet. The neighbor on the other side is normal spacing, and my antennas are 200 feet from any possible residence. I do have a magnetic loop antenna for receive. I could NEVER pull off a move. I regret, a little, where we live now. Other locations we looked at were usually double the price for the house and local taxes. We're in a 1990's built tri-level home. $155,000 on a 1.1 acre lot, city water and sewer, Nat gas heat.
The lots in back of my house are owned by one person. And he's not planning anything, for now.The plasma TV syndrome may eventually head my way, but with this slow economy, nothing will happen that quick in this dead town.
When we visited in Washington DC in Sept., it is crazy down there. There is no recession in a Government town like D.C.
This "developer' seems like a shot in the dark, to buy up some properties and build rental units. A financial friend of his has many small apartments buildings in our township and they are rented out and it looks like he knows how to rent to responsible people.
The small cities that never got out of the manufacturing revolution, never became part of the new economy. They are infested with drugs and crime. New Castle Pa., Sharon Pa., Youngstown Ohio.,,,,etc etc.

Fred

[flintstone mop]

Small update.
I'll post a video on YouTube on the new aerial.
A little operating on 3705 and sig reports tells me this antenna is doing FB OM.
Later today I'll video a little walk and show the new OWL and walk with a field strength meter to compare what I read with the original folded up, shortie.
This 'new' antenna is just stretched out to full length...for 160M 240 feet long at 60 feet high and the K1JJ tuner.

Fred...........more later and the link

[KB2WIG]

U did very well up here last night.


klc

[flintstone mop]

OK I'm gonna be a BURT and post my first YouTube video.
Not as polished as Burt, but a beginning. Struggles with raw video from the HD camcorder, Sony editing software and rendering,converting from HD to MP4

Any way it's there.
I hope there is no copyright infringement on the K1JJ tuner

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95goqNmJFTQ

Enjoy HA!
FRED

[Steve - K4HX]

Nice set up Fred! Looks like you have the new antenna up high and flat. Should work like gangbusters.

[K1JJ]

Yep, nice video, Fred.

You still gots lots of room out there to play with antennas.    That telephone pole makes the QTH and gives you plenty of options.

T

[k4kyv]

What is the total length of the run of OWL from the antenna all the way to the tuner?

What you need is a reversible motor to run the vacuum variable.  But be sure to include a system of mechanical stops to prevent the possibility of damaging the cap by inadadvertently trying to turn it beyond its minimum and maximum limits.

[flintstone mop]

What is the total length of the run of OWL from the antenna all the way to the tuner?

What you need is a reversible motor to run the vacuum variable.  But be sure to include a system of mechanical stops to prevent the possibility of damaging the cap by inadadvertently trying to turn it beyond its minimum and maximum limits.

TOTAL length of the OWL including the feed point is a little over 200 feet.

Don, There are taps to change besides adjusting the capacitor. I don't want to get complicated with motors and switches.

My 'signal strength meter' is showing me about the same level of RF under the dipole as it was when most of the wire was folded down the two supports. BUT it was only near the ends... NOW there is more RF on the entire length of the Dipole. At the center.....it is much lower...then it starts to rise again to the same level walking the other half of the dipole.
There is more wire available or exposed into the air to radiate RF.
Thanks for the looks and comments.
Fred

[KD0HUX]

GREAT JOB FRED

[k4kyv]

What is the total length of the run of OWL from the antenna all the way to the tuner?

TOTAL length of the OWL including the feed point is a little over 200 feet.

How sharp tuning is it? 

Why I am asking is that one of the reasons I haven't gone with tuned feeders all the way from shack to dipole is that the total length of OWL in my case would be about 260 ft.- more than 4 quarter waves in tandem on 80 and up to 8 2/3 quarter waves in tandem at certain frequencies on 40. That would make the tuning rather sharp, and probably wouldn't allow the same configuration  (series or parallel tuning) to be used all the way across the band, since the extra or deficient length in each of the tandem quarter waves adds up cumulatively so that with each additional quarter wave of line the total error becomes a larger percentage of a single quarter wave, and would became significant enough on some frequencies to cause the feed point to shift from near a current node closer to a voltage node when QSYing from the top end to the bottom end of the band.

Instead, the current project is to modify the existing balanced link coupled tuners from 50 ohms input (matching the present coax link back to the shack) to present a 438 ohm load to the flat balanced feed line when tuned to resonance, and use only 120' of the total OWL as tuned feeders.

I may try it both ways - as above and using the whole thing as tuned feeders (with a proper tuner in the shack) and compare results.

I have  already observed that the 140' run of coax line, even when using fresh coax, is 92% efficient, while 140' of flat (untuned) OWL measures to be 98% efficient.

[flintstone mop]

That is interesting info, Don
The longer OWL made me move my coil tap points 1-2 turns in towards the center. The tuning seems a little sharper now. Swinging the freq on the MFJ 269 is a little smaller resonance window.
The tuner is in the parallel config. I do not think it will no longer allow 40M. The shorter OWL let me barely get to 40M with one turn remaining in the center of the coil.

Anyone see in the video any set up of the tuner that might not be correct? I am tapping the coil along with the feed line and the vac variable together.

I could experiment and try series and look at tap points and tuner range and take another walk with the sig meter. It's really a very basic neat military box.  It is the
ME 61/GRC, Multronics, Rockville Md.
http://www.radiomuseum.org/r/military_meter_field_strength_me_6.html

Thanks for the info.....always a challenge,,,,,,and not having a professional engineer to 'come by and optimize my station', makes me want to play with this more.

The Rally on 3705 gave me some confidence that this is heading in the right direction, with reports of 20 over and seeing 20-40 over on my RX. Even weaker stations further West from me were S-9. It was really a perfect night...

Fred