[Lowfer] LF Travail II

[Peter Barick]

All,
Hopefully this is my last bark under this rubric. But another screw-up came to light yesterday. Lesson learned hard way: "A short-terminated twisted pair feedline is still a feedline, no way an antenna."

Of course I learned this the hard-knocks way. I wanted to try a twisted pair feedline on the large loop for 500M, it being 65-feet from the house, replacing common TV coax. At the same time I made up a fresh capacitor-tuning, balun box. All setup, I turned on the receiver only to find it "signal starved"--not even BC coming through. However if partially connecting the rx feedline signals were present. I was miffed. How could this be? Seems I created a black hole antenna!

Perplexed, I put it off for a while and just yesterday took the tuning box back to the bench where upon I discovered the matter, a short across the loop input. (How could I misread a simple diagram? !)  All came alive once the repair was made. But the lesson: how effective the terminated, twisted pair was at "not" picking up signals. Worked as theory describes. Apparently the line was well balanced otherwise.

This line is suspended by poly rope from the loop to the building, for balance, where another balun feeds coax and through the wall.

-- Peter