[Antennas] Home Brew balanced line

[Steve L.]

Hi Kees,

5) the old open wire 4"-6" spaced ladder line is not
as affected by moisture but is a pain to make and run.

I'd like to urge you to take the longer-term view of
this and make your own balanced line. Use 14AWG
hard-drawn stranded copper wire and 1/2" (OD) CPVC for
spacers. Personally I use 2.5" spacing but 4" is good.
The loss is very low and it's really not harder to
install than the vinyl-coated windowed stuff (which I
also use) and it doesn't change w/ weather unless you
get ICE on the wires.

The 10m contest was a real pain for me this year. Why?
Because it kept raining and drying, raining and
drying... and each time I had to re-tune my transmatch
to keep the VSWR good. Not much of a problem on the
lower freqs, but very noticeable on 10m, especially at
1500W, especially when tired.

My approach to making a lot of balanced line is to do
it in stages. Buy the materials and store them in the
garage. One day, drill and cut the spacers, put 'em in
a big bag and forget about it. A week or two later,
thread them onto the wires and use hot glue to hold
them. Roll the whole thing up on a spool and forget
about it. Another day, connect it to your antenna and
dress/support it. Another day actually tune it up.
When you are done, however, it's good to go for many
years.

OK, now you know why I buy the commercial stuff!

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