[HCARC] 3rd try to get this back through

[Gary and Arlene Johnson]

Good answers from Kerry, Bob, and Don.

First, let me explain something - About a month or so ago I went to an estate sale here in Center Point where the guy having the estate sale was selling a BUNCH of ham gear (1000's of tubes, meters, wire, antennas, etc) that came from some 80+ year old Ham that had died within the last ?? year(s) here in Kerrville.  Not knowing much (I am newbie) I "invested" a little cash in some the stuff.  All told I have $40 invested in 2 of the AS-2259 antennas, an RC-292 40+ foot whip antenna, a used G5RV antenna (or maybe it's just a 102' dipole with ladder line), a new 500 foot roll of 14 gauge antenna wire, a working and almost new from the look of it Heathkit oscilloscope, and one of the coil wire tuners that you see on tthe base of a whip antenna.  Not a bad little haul for a $40 investment.  I virtually have nothing invested in the antennas working or not.  My questions are why can't they be made to work, what has to be done to make them work, we can replace the copper dipoles with ones of different length, we can combine the Hard Coax in whatever manner we want, we can do whatever to make it work and if it doesn't I'll wrap it up and resell it for a profit on Ebay.  What I don't understand is how some copper wire in one configuration doesn't perform much the same as some other copper wire off the same roll (hypothetically).  I can't figure out why if the wire itself doesn't have a different SWR/resonance (assuming that both sections of copper wire had common charcteristics) that it would be different after running it down one kind of coax vs another kind of coax and if I were to just take the steel antenna mast sections I have that are totally hollw, why couldn't I just run some low swr coax through it and mount the antenna head on that.  REMEMBER - A NEWBIE TALKING HERE!!!!

Kerry - the "radiating Coax" on a Carolina Windom is 22 feet long and the G5RV is 34.8 feet of 450 ohm window line.  Carolina Windom has a 4:1 balun at the top of the Coax and a choke balun (I assume 1:1 at the bottom of the 22 foot section).

Don - thanks for the lead on wire, but I am if nothing else "wire rich",  plenty of 14 guage insulated and uninsulated, and at least 1900 feet of #6 copper insulated if I really want to go crazy.  I have another bunch (about 1500 ft)  of insulated aluminum in a copper size equivalent of 00 and about 175 feet of actual uninsulated copper in 00.  If I had a radio instead of so much wire that has been given to me, I'd be far better off.

Something to consider - In one of my older Monitoring Times Magazines (or at least I think it was in MT) there was a article about a group of Hams that used to get together either every Wed or every other Wed or maybe once a month in Mesa, AZ and they would get to the park early and erect antennas and play with them.  That's where I came up with the 2 lawn chairs on a T mast idea.  They bring some donuts and coffee, a few radios, some batteries and associated equipment and try out weird ideas for antennas.  Once the weather cools down a bit, it might be fun to find a park and go there (with the club banner of course) and try out antennas.  We get to have fun, learn something (at least some of us would) and let the public see what Hams can do with funny antennas.  One guy in that group brought one of the square clothlines and erected it on a mast and proceeded to transit.  Another guy put up an umbrella.

Gary J
N5BAA