[Lowfer] I need antenna advice from the guys who have !!

[Andy - KU4XR]

Hello All:

It's time now to get down to some serious and beneficial ant. work. My xmtr is working fine, and with my current ant.setup, I'm getting possibly around 8 to 10 miles of local ground coverage. In brief, it's a 30 foot coax cable verticalsection with a 40 foot wire tophat up about 25 feet high on a homemade wooden " A " frame mast, with the top 10 feet being PVC pipe.I'm using loading coils out of old TVs and computer pwr supplys until I found the most output power, no ground radials yet,( best I could do for now ). Money will be a factor for me, and copper is out the roof right now, so I'll have to be pretty frugal with my improvements. From my research, it seems that variometers are the most widely used for ant. matching, and the 5 gallon bucket version seems to be the most common.so, that's the direction I'm considering. QUESTION #1 !! using the 5 gallon bucket; what size wire will give the most inductance per turn ?? Most likely I'll be using a plastic
 covered wire of some sort.
QUESTION #2 !! I assume " Tap Points " every few turns would be in order for fine tuning  ?? Also; the materials need to be easily obtainable from local building supply stores.
This is a good starting place for me to get some input now, and all input will be appreciated. 73, and thanks in advance for your responses.

Andy - KU4XR