[Lowfer] Wm beacon testing tonight @ JAY

[Mike-WE0H]

And Bill was a excellent shot with his bow n arrow :) I was lucky and 
had Bill stop by my house one day long ago and he shot his lines over my 
trees to haul up that #8 THHN Jay had shipped. The memories of back then 
will never fade :)

Mike
WE0H
WD2XGI


John A wrote:
> Charlie,
>
> Conductor loss in a loaded vertical is not usually the big issue, 
> unless you have the ground and environmental losses really nailed (not 
> possible for most of us). So the Litz wouldn't be a lot of help.
>
> Transmit loops are another matter, though, due to the inherent low 
> resistances involved. Radiation resistance is best expressed in 
> micro-Ohms, so conductor resistance and environmental losses are 
> important.
>
> Bill Ashlock definitely did experiment with Litz wire on his backyard 
> loops. The results were initially very promising. But Litz is fragile 
> -- the tiny strands are easy to break, and the constant motion in the 
> trees is a big problem. To protect the wire, he used garden hose (or 
> something similar). That did help keep the water out, until moisture 
> began condensing inside the hose. But it could not keep the strands 
> from breaking with all of the swinging around.
>
> From an August, 2002 email from Bill: "I'm at a Q of about 200 with 
> both the Litz cable and 1/2" cu pipe. The soil loss at the moment is 
> about .22 ohms and probably won't improve more than a few 100ths. 
> Therefore the limiting Q would be under 500 even if the conductor had 
> a 0 ohm Rac. This wouldn't pose much of a handicap for CW operation - 
> nothing like the Qs in the thousands that the guys operating loops in 
> the HF Ham bands experience."
>
> He gave up on the Litz fairly quickly, and went with the copper 
> tubing. Not cheap (especially these days), but if you silver-solder 
> the fittings and keep the copper thieves away, it works darn well. I 
> never saw that loop -- Bill said it didn't look very pretty, though. 
> He just kept soldering sections together and hauling them up into the 
> trees.
>
> This brings up one additional point. Bill had the correct concept of a 
> vertical loop: maximize the height, and provide the minimum amount of 
> conductor near and parallel to the ground. His concept of the best 
> xmit loop was to shoot a line over a single tall and wide tree, or 
> maybe two trees close to each other. Trees with big canopies at the 
> top were preferred. I've deftly ignored this advice, hence the limited 
> performance of some of the antennas!
>
> John, W1TAG