[Elecraft] longwire & the auto tuner

[John D'Ausilio]

On 6/28/05, Lee Buller <k0wa at swbell.net> wrote:
> 
> A longwire is a good antenna if there is a good counterpoise (ground or radials or a large >body of salt water).  I have played around with them using a simple 365 pf BC cap and a >coil of wire and I can load one every time.
> 

I'm staying at a house on the beach in Westbrook, CT for the week .. I
got a 16.5 foot crappie pole from Cabela's, a surf rod holder from
Benny's, tied an 87 foot piece of wire to the eyelet and at low tide
set the pole in the rod holder into the sand. It's been there for 6
cycles of the tides now and it looks like it's holding steady :) The
wire runs over a minimum of 20 feet of ocean, and maybe 55 feet at
high tide.

I have it connected to the red post on my ZM2, and a 17 foot
counterpoise hangs out of the window and is sort of run along the side
of the house (away from the water) attaches to the black post (link to
ground). It tunes fine on 80/40/30/20 with the ATS .. with the KX1 I
tune it by hand and then kick in the ATU so I don't have to manually
retune on 30/40. Guess I really should go over to the radioshaft and
see if they have a banana-to-bnc adapter to see how the KX1 handles it
alone ...

de John/W1RT