[KL7AA] 160 Meters

[JD Delancy]

With a hankering to get on 160 and necessitity being the mother of invention (or something like that), I came up with an antenna

I had about 300 feet of the thinnet coax, like we used on networks several years ago, laying about collecting dust. Thinnet is RG58 like stuff with a braid, 100 percent foil under the braid and a center conductor.  Started running it from an electric fence insulator on a tree at about 20 feet on the West side of property, ran it South about 75 feet to a point in a tree up about 35 feet, then a 90 deg turn to the East for about 100 feet to another tree, then vertically about 40 feet to a "way up there" branch that had a "Y" in it and onward to the North for the remainder of the thinnet and up about 60 feet in yet another tree.  A piece of RG58 goes out of the shack to the 1st tree where its center conductor connects to the braid, foil and center conductor of the thinnet stuff.  The RG58 center conductor only connects to a MFJ969 tuner

I was skeptical at first about it but experimentation is part of the hobby.  The MFJ tuned up fine, so I put my TS520 on it, all 100 watts of it.  The first couple of times I used it, there were contacts up and down the east coast.  Then one morning there was KL7J in Soldotna Alaska, he was S4-5.  I worked him, first call and I have the QSL to prove it.  One night about 2200ET I heard SV3RF; another answer came forth, unbelievable!  The real test came when the K5D Desecheo Island operation started, that one took two calls to break the pileup.  As a bonus there was KV4FZ in the Virgin Island worked


I don't know what the theory is behind this lashed up antenna but it sure seems to work