[Elecraft] OT: Stupid question about excess ladder line.

[Ron D'Eau Claire]

Keith KD1E asked:
I just picked up a dipole fed with ladder line.  Plan to use it for FD. The
antenna has 100 feet of parallel feed (window ladder line) and there is no
way I'll need that much.  I don't want to cut the feed line because next
time I use the temporary antenna I may need more.
 
So what do I do with the excess?  If it was coax, I'd just pile it up on the
ground.
 
Maybe I should park the Element further away so I can stretch the feed line
out straight from the rig to the antenna.  I could maybe use tomb stones to
hold the feed line off the ground ... :-)

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That sounds like a "doublet" or "center fed" antenna intended for use with a
tuner for multi-band operation. (It's a "dipole" only on the frequency where
it's 1/2 wavelength long.)

A good rule of thumb is to *never* use more feedline of any type than you
need for the job. In some cases (as in when the feedline is low-loss and
well matched) it doesn't make a huge difference whether you have 50 feet or
200 feet of line, so smart operators don't chop coax up, especially for
temporarily installations. 

However, open wire line or window line is unaffected by neatly-done and
soldered splices. There's really no reason not to cut that stuff to length,
then simply splice the rest back on later if needed. The one situation where
you might want to use (or splice back on) a little more feeder than is
needed to reach the rig is if your antenna tuner won't handle the impedance
it presents on some frequencies. In that case, don't bunch up the extra feed
line. Run it wherever there's room so there's 2 or 3 times the width of the
feeder from other objects. 

Ron AC7AC