Great Day For Antenna Work!

[n3lrx]

Great day today!

I woke up feeling better than I've felt in a long time and decided to get off my arse and do something! I stretched out about 300 feet of wire (Courtesy of the JN TNX OM!). I decided since I've got the real estate I'll make a modified AHE Dipole. So now I've got a 160m open loop. Or a 160m dipole folded over on itself. I'll spread the radiators out about 12 inches with plastic supports and feed it with open wire feeder. Should work pretty good, or at least I hope so!

I'll probably wind up making a horizontal L or a lazy L since I'm not sure if I can sneak up in my neighbors tree and rehang the other leg. Instead I may shoot one leg across my property, then do a 90 and shoot the other leg out into the woods.

Not sure how my rad pattern will be but I guess we'll see. The feed point will be pointing south and the ends will be NE and W. I'll try to get it as flat as I can but I guess I won't know till I get some more feed line made up. Then I can drop the old weather beaten one legged dipole and haul up the new one and see where the best place is for the ends. The old one is up about 60' now. I may or may not be able to get it a little higher.. I'll have to do some finagling around some pretty hefty limbs.

So, pending on how long it takes me to build the E Rig I'll be on the air on 75 and 160 with a halfway better than half ass signal! LOL

I'm gonna try to make old buzzard ladder line with 2 runs of wire separated by plastic blocks. Should be fun. I've got the Johnson Spark Box.. So I hope it can handle at least some of the outpoot! My next project I guess is going to have to be an old buzzard tuner. Might have to be a through the window tuner so I can keep the feed line outside. If anyone asks, I can say it's Free Air Conditioning! It gets it's power through ionospheric coupling which makes electricity! LOL

[Jim, W5JO]

Be glad you have the weather to do all that.  Here in the South of Oklahoma I have almost a half inch of ice on everything and it is still accumulating.  The forecast is for the worst part to arrive tonight and last through tomorrow then march East.  The storm is from just South of me up to near Springfield, Illinaucious.

Donno what you will get out East of us, but it is cold and crappy.

[n3lrx]

Now that I'm thinking of it..
What would be better as a feed point if I fed it flat out and folded or if I fed it like a Z with the feed and ends opposing each other?

Or should I say, the current and voltage nodes opposing each other, or both on the same plane? Cross fed it would lay flat, with the equal weight on both sides, fed on the same plane it would lay vertical.

I'm thinking if I Z feed it the high voltage node would have more chance of arcing to the lower voltage current node. Or am I wrong? Does it really matter?

The separator for both the feed and the end loop are about 6" wide and there is at least 5-1/2" gap between wire.