[Lowfer] A little more antenna work done today - kinda long reading

[Andy - KU4XR]

Hi all:

After an enjoyable church service this morning, and a delicious
meal at home afterwards,I took the opportunity to try to finish 
up some final RF connections on the lowFER antenna before trying 
to raise it into position. MAN !! it's kinda cold outside today !!
A cold front is moving thru this afternoon, and the temp is in
the mid 50's with a brisk breeze blowing, so it feels like it's
more like 50 degrees. Yesterday was over 70 so that's a noticable
drop in the temp today. I connected a 3 foot PVC offset pipe to 
the mast that will put the down lead in the middle of the window
instead of down the side of the mobile home ( aluminum ) hopefully,
this will help to lessen coupling effects of the antenna wire as it
enters the shack. I had a run of 5 strand commercial mic cable on
hand, so I used it to replace the #10 stranded wire I was using 
before, The biggest benefit was less weight hanging on the offset
pipe, and possibly lower DC resistance too. I twisted the 5 conductors
together for the lowest resistance. And I did a " play it on the safe 
side " connection. I ran a solid piece of aluminum wire from the
loading coil all the way to the tip of the Top Hat. Just in case,
OR, most likely WHEN the aluminum foil tape begins to fail, at least
there will still be a solid connection the length of the antenna.
It's going to be interesting to see how this " concoction " of an
antenna performs. Way too much wind so no antenna raising party
today, but I'm now starting to get kinda itchy to get it up into
the air. After installing the strap wire, I did a resistance 
measurement on the full length of the antenna. The Top Hat is
touching the ground so I don't know if that had any effect on the 
measured resistance, but from the tip of the down lead, to the 
Top Hat, the resistance measured 4 Ohms...BTW the coil is wound
with around 320 feet of #16 insulated soild wire to get the 2.3mH
of Inductance. The 4 Ohms reading seems a little low to me, and
after thinking about the situation for a few minutes, it dawned on
me; I had to use around 30 feet of clip leads connected together
to span the antenna length, and the meter itself I'm sure has some
amount of internal resistance, so I figure that when I parralled
the meter and wire to the antenna, I cut the DC resistance lower
than it actually is. Most likely the resistance will come closer
to around 7 to 9 Ohms. I didn't get to do a self capacitance
measurement on the loading coil because I already had all the
RF connections made, and sealed. 
Thanks for taking the time reading this, and I wish all the best 73:


Andy - KU4XR - EM75xr - Friendsville, TN. USA
LOWfer Beacon " XR " @ 185.29875 KHz ( QRSS-60 )

*** Temporarily OFF, while constructing a new antenna ***

Coordinates:  N:  35º 43' 54" - W:  84º 3' 16"
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