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My antenna system...

AudioShockwav said:
As I posted a page or so ago......it is more of a not sure what he meant by Hard line WIRE...that is confusing.
Lots of guys run ladder line for very long runs because of low loss and it is much cheaper than coax/hardline.
He may have posted on another forum about his set-up, but I do not see it here.
If you would like to go back through all of his posts on this forum and find it, that's fine.
Maybe we should just wait for oatmeal to stop by and tell us.

73
Jeff
Click to expand...

Here is a link to when Oatmeal talked about his mountain line, but it is on another forum. Check out the discussion, and make up your own minds about the possibilities. I can't say Oatmeal didn't do what he said, but it would amaze me if it worked under those conditions. I've tried to use professional made coax with graphs in them before and they don't work. The impedance bump is so bad your SWR would be in right field. Such graphs are not intended to be installed into full radio service. They are used only in cases where full length is necessary to fill a spool in the production line. Such spools are marked as such for the purchaser and the spools may be priced accordingly.

http://www.mauldroppers.com/showthread.php?17556-Hard-line-wire-coax&p=220841#post220841

359, check out the sage comments you made in your signature area.
 
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If I am reading that right, he is splicing 1/2" hard line by stripping it back and twisting the center conductors together with wire nuts, then bonding the outer shield somehow with hose clamps leaving several inches of the center conductor with no shielding over it and bent away from where the shield is connected together.

10-4, when I spliced mine together, I twisted both center wires together and twisted a wire nut on them....
For the ground, I slowly bent the wire in a angle so the 2 ends where the aluminum would touch, I used 2 water clamps to hold this in place.....
After the splice is made it looks like a up side down V..
Its all wrapped up in black electrical tape with silicone on that..
With this guy wire, you can wrap the 2 ends together and this will not allow any tention on the splice...
Click to expand...


We really need to see a picture of that.
I have to agree with Marconi, this is not the way to splice coax, the 75 ohm impedance in that section of the line must be really out of whack.
As for it working.....ya it might work but you have to think that it is really not the way to do a splice in coax and who knows what the loss is going from one end to the other..
I think he really needs to do the test Eddie was talking about....to see how much of the power from the radio is being lost in the feed line before it gets to the antenna.
I see the advantage of putting a antenna up on top of a hill as opposed to down in a hole, or up against the side of a mountain but I have to think that if he used the proper connectors it would be way better that splicing it like that.
The W7NN Home made connectors would be a much better way to go...Don`t you think?

73
Jeff
 
And just for information sake, those long feed lines (parallel feed lines) up a mountain to an antenna used to be called a 'passive repeater'. Same for those cell antennas glued to a window of a car with a smaller antenna connected to the inside of the window. They've been around for an extremely long time. In a few cases they can actually improve reception, but not in most. That deals primarily in the losses in the feed lines.
Depending on the number of those splices and how they are done, they can negate the use of very low loss 'hardline'. Not as much on HF as on VHF/UHF, but there's still a loss at HF with improper 'splicing'.
For very long feed line runs, the 'ohmic' losses can and do amount to enough that an antenna (load) doesn't even have to be connected to that other end and the SWR will look very nice. That distributed 'ohmic' loss fools an SWR meter into thinking there's a nicely matched load on the end of that cable when there actually isn't anything there.
None of all that even touches on the impedance mismatch possible with dissimilar impedance cables, or the losses associated with that mismatch.
- 'Doc
 
Well,

Chest thumping and physics lessons aside...

The dude managed to talk to people with his mountainside shack, fed with patchworked cable.

That's all that matters. Guess he was not obsessed with milking out every last little drop of juice.

Probably shoulda made some better couplings though.
 
The dude managed to talk to people with his mountainside shack, fed with patchworked cable.

That's all that matters. Guess he was not obsessed with milking out every last little drop of juice.
Click to expand...

If he is talking on it, (and I am sure he is) that`s fine, I do not think anyone said it "will not" work, just saying if it was connected together properly it would be better.
I was changing antennas one time and had about 60 feet of coax laying laying out on the ground in the back yard.
Just for grins, I loaded up the open feed line ( yes un-terminated coax) with a 989C tuner and talked all over town with it.
Kind of like the shoe string dipped in salt water thing, will it work, yes.
Can it be better, most defiantly, and depending on how many splices maybe much better.
And for line length, there is a point were feed line gets so long it is not worth it.
It is even worse at VHF than HF.

I still think it would be a good test to put a dummy load and meter at the end of the feed-line and see how much power is getting through, that will tell all of us a lot.
And Oatmeal:
After you read all of this:
I am NOT bagging on you, no insult intended at all, but very interested in the results of the test above.


73
Jeff
 
Line Type: Andrew Heliax LDF4-50A
Line Length: 625 Feet
Frequency: 27MHz
Load SWR: 1.2:1(estimate)
Power In: 100 W(estimate)

Results
Matched Loss: 2.121 dB
SWR Loss: 0 dB
Total Loss: 2.121 dB
Power Out: 61.363 W

Source:
Coax Calculator

Not accounting for splices, that is what Heliax will do at that length. With 'splices' over that length; even Heliax won't be much help. Depends on the kind of splice it is. Using barrel connectors, the loss will be well-tolerated. With open splices? Forgeddabout!


A lesser quality cable - let's say Times/Microwave LMR-400 will be:

Results
Matched Loss: 3.954 dB
SWR Loss: 0dB
Total Loss: 3.954 dB
Power Out: 40.238 W
 
Wow, sorry guys I didnt mean to open a can of worms...

Yea, Im running what used to be the old style TV line, stuff you can maybe still see in some areas on telephone poles....some of this stuff that is on the poles, you will see the aluminum part showing..
This wire is a coax forum, NOT ladder line...it does work guys..
Ive heard guys call this stuff, pole to pole wire, hardline wire..

A friend of mine got a bunch of this stuff when this cable was replaced with the new stuff, in which my friend sold me this stuff, I bought little more than 700ft of it for 70.00 bucks.. 3 years ago..and my friend, he runs 2000ft on it his self..not sure how many splices he had but he got the connectors..

Heres what it looks like: it has a black plastic/rubber outer cover and theres also a steel guy wire that runs along the inside of this outer cover also....
Next layer, have a aluminum cover, then you have some white insulation made of like foam/rubber, then the center wire which is solid and it is copper...the stuff Im using is 1/2" stuff..and I have 625ft of it now..
Been running this stuff about 3 years now and it does work, have talked alot of DX on it....anyone who Ive talked with in dx, this is what I was running when we talked....they can tell yea if it works or not..

But at the present, Ive been talking alot of dx on ssb, which I do stay on 38lsb when dx is rolling in...been talking with just the radio, since my box is down...I also talk sometimes on the 10m band..

Im sure from what Ive been reading some of you all think this is BS or a lie, well no lies here its the truth...im sure there is better ways of making the splices in this line, but I have used the wire nuts and used water clamps to connect the ground side of the wire....Im not the only one who fixed my line this way, most people in my area who runs this stuff has there spliced the same way, and they all talk great...these guys are into talking local, but me, well Im into talking DX....

The reason for the long run of wire, where I live I have power lines running through the back yard, have a transformer on the hill side of me and some other lines running through the front yard...but I have a mountain on the other side of me, so I run this line back on the mountain...the antenna isnt on the top it sets on a ridge...
 
Whatever some people call it, the proper name is cable TV trunk line or CATV aluminum hardline. It is the main trunk feeder that runs from pole to pole for miles down the road. Drop leads of RG-6 tap off of it and run into the customer's house etc. BTW, Jack VE1ZZ is a world class DXer. He is top of the class in low band DXing on 160m as well as 6m Jack uses CATV trunk line exclusively in his multitude of wire antennas and has many runs of several hundred feet. He splices his cable by using old style marrette connectors that have the clamping screw on the center connector. For the shield he uses hose clamps. To "weather proof" the splices he inverts a plastic pop bottle over the whole thing. It looks like crap, and defys all good engineering practices but guess what. It works and it has put him at the top of the worlds best DXers list.

CATV-Trunk-Hardline-500-Coaxial-Cable.jpg
 
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Im sure from what Ive been reading some of you all think this is BS or a lie, well no lies here its the truth
Click to expand...

No Name calling intended
I just wanted to know if it was ladder line, or indeed coax.
It is a awesome deal to get that amount of trunk line for the price you paid for it.
I am sure you are incurring losses due to the splices in the line, and it could only get better if you decide to use the homebrew connectors that W7NN uses, shown above.
BUT
If it is working for you and you are happy with it, IT IS FINE.
Just pointing out that it could be better.
And I still think it would be a great test to get some one to help you and do the test that Eddie was talking about, just to see what the line losses are in the feed line.
I hope this clears up the mis-understanding.

73
Jeff
 
Oatmeal said:
So, this Jack fella lives up there near you ?...
Click to expand...

He is about 70 miles east of me in a place called Head of Jeddorerighto the coast.

just a note about low swr on long runs of cable. You can. Be fooled real easy as the reflected power is also attenuated by the line. Losses and that is after the power gets attenuatet on the first trip down the line.. Casein point. I once tested. A 20 watt transmitter on 959.9875 Mhz into a roll of coax cable with no antenna or dummyload attached. The SWR showed 1.2.1as only a small amount of power was getting to the end and then onky a small amoint of that was getting back to the meter which was stillreading 20w forward but almost nothing reflectepardon my spelling. Onmy phone at work and no glasses on.
 

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