[R-390] Ultimate Antenna (well, up till now at least!)

[Tim Shoppa]

Roy knows about some of my antenna adventures this fall, but a brief
summary for those that haven't followed my goals and ambitions:

I figured out that I could hang an 80M dipole (cut for the low end as
I work CW) between two trees at the corners of my property. It's
a rather odd-shaped piece of property, but that's fine, because if
it was more rectangular then I wouldn't have 130 feet between trees :-).

I had previously sent lead weights up about 50 feet into the trees to
hang antennas, but wanted to do better this time. So I built myself
a pneumatic tennis ball canon: http://www.antennalaunchers.com/
This gizmo sends tennis balls not into trees, but just plain over trees.
Towing some fishing line from a reel, I hauled my antenna up somewhere
between 90 and 100 feet above the ground.

First iteration fed the antenna with coax, and I tried to cover multiple
bands with a fan dipole configuration. Worked good on 80M, did not do
well on the other bands at all! Took it down, and sent it up with 450
ohm ladder line. Wow, what a difference a day makes! The intermod
from the local BCB is just gone if I use this antenna with a balanced
tuner or a receiver with a balanced input (ala the R-390A).

Today I built some proper standoffs for bringing the wire into the shack
(before it was just kinda dangling across the side of the house and over
the garage - OK until the ladder line lies on the gutter!). Tomorrow,
a real lightning arrestor built around two spark plugs. Gotta get that
M14x1.25 tap!

I am so so happy with the results. With the balanced feedline it's perfect
to match into my 390A; with the coax there was awful intermod from the BCB's
down the street but with the ladder line it's just clean. The same clean
that I previously achieved with loops and twinax, but with a whole
lot more height than I could get from my attic. And with my
link-coupled tuner, the thing loads up into my vintage transmitters just
fine on 80M, 40M, 20M, and 15M. Someday I'll have to get a rig that
transmits on the WARC bands too, but not that modern yet :-).

Tim N3QE