Longwire help

[bgolpmp]

OK I am sure I am not the first with this problem, but my wife does not want me to put up an antenna at the house. I think if I use some small wire, no one will ever see it. So.... What is the smallest copper wire I can use for a longwire antenna??? I have about 150 feet of space to get the wire in. I don't run an amp, so figure 100 watts max. I mostly want to do some qrp cw. Also if I hook the center of the coax up to the long wire, would it be best to drive a 8' ground rod and hook the braid up to that???? I will be using a little mfj antenna tuner. Is 50 ohm coax what I should use???

Thanks
And 73's

 

[towerdog]

Do you pay the bills or does she?

 

[hookedon6]

"Balls" said the queen, "If i had them, i'd be King!!"

 

[KE3W]

Until someone pipes in - pretty much the wire should be large enough to handle any wind - no use having it break on ya. Anyway, if you want to get going real quick - take a look at something like this 80 - 10 Meter HF Stealth Portable End-Fed Wire Antenna...

 

[W5LZ]

bgolpmp,
The wire has to be strong enough to support it's own weight, whatever size that happens to be, for whatever type of metal it is. That depends on how long of a span it will be, and how many 'spans' you can manage, and how 'droopy' each span would be. The strongest 'small' wire I can think of is 'CopperWeld', a copper clad steel wire. I think it comes in 18 gauge? It isn't invisible, but isn't that easy to see once it's been up for a while, it tarnishes.
A 'long wire' or random length wire requires a good ground system to work properly. A ground rod is very seldom even close to a good ground system. Laying several lengths of wire as radials will do much better. Those radials should be as long as possible, probably the same length as the wire in the air, times as many as you can put down. They don't have to be very deep at all, just enough so that you don't trip over them or wind them up in the lawn mower.
Long wire, or random wire antennas are not going to be 'super' usable for multiband antennas. How well they work is a function of their length just like any other antenna. Using a tuner is almost a certainty, the better the tuner the more bands the thing will be capable of tuning. The 'smaller' the tuner the closer that antenna's length will have to be to some multiple of a wave length for the band of choice (fractions of a wave length too, not just whole wave lengths).
Not quite as simple as usually thought, huh?
- 'Doc

 

[bgolpmp]

Right now my wife pays the bills, I am laid off..... I wear the pants, she tells me which ones!! lol

Anyways I am not sure that my little MFJ tuner will be able to handle the tuning. Space is not an issue, I can get up plenty of wire. Now I am worried about the tuner not being able to tune it. The thing I really liked about this antenna was the fact that I could have berried the coax because the coax would connect at ground level. I guess I should start thinking of some sort of mobile or portable antenna, maybe a small vertical?? Any suggestions on something low cost to get me on the air???? I just bought a tempo one and it is driving me nuts to just look at it!!!!

Thanks


Andy

 

[W5LZ]

Suggestions?
I would think that you've probably already thought of about anything I could suggest. Is a dipole out of the question? It isn't that difficult to combine several in one, just takes longer to tune. Lots of possibilities, that dipole probably the simplest. You can make almost anything work if you want to bad enough.
Good luck.
- 'Doc

 

[KE3W]

bgolpmp - what MFJ do you have?

 

[hookedon6]

OK... if I hook the center of the coax up to the long wire, would it be best to drive a 8' ground rod and hook the braid up to that???? I will be using a little mfj antenna tuner. Is 50 ohm coax what I should use???

Thanks
And 73's

ok,.... joke time is over.

don't worry about "burnin up" the wire,.... ain't gonna happen, just use wire big enuf to be physically strudy.

need more info,.... what band?
how high are both ends gonna be?
all grounds "should" be tied togeather at one common point.

 

[C2]

Build a dipole with #18 copper clad steel wire.

The WireMan - Antenna Wire

Feed it with twinlead, ladderline - whatever you want to call it. Use a balan to convert to unbalanced line (coax) to bring it into the house.

No need for ground