Frank and Bill make good points. For the last 10 years, I have been using 3/4"
CATV for most of the 190-foot run from my house to my antennas. To be
specific, I use RG-213 up the tower and across the roof of my house to my
2nd-floor shack, but use multiples of a half-wave at 1750 Hz (measured at 28
MHz) of 3/4" CATV in between. Contrary to some expectations, this has worked
quite well - even fairly large frequency excursions on 28 MHz do not present
unacceptable SWRs at the shack end. I had considered using UNUNs to do the
matching, but was never able to build any that were satisfactory.
I am now about to replace my CATV with Eupen's equivalent of LDF4-50A,
purchased from the RF Connection (www.therfc.com). Several reasons - I want to
be able to monitor loss from the shack, something that my composite feedline
doesn't seem to let me do (the indicated loss on my MFJ-259B varies widely with
frequency). The Eupen cable is noticeably cheaper than Andrew's, but uses the
same Andrew connectors. And it just seemed like a technically sounder thing to
do. I really don't expect any significant improvement, but just decided to do
it anyhow.
BTW, I have no connection with the RF Connection - just a satisfied customer.
And man, I wouldn't like to have Bill's moving bill!
73, Pete N4ZR
At 07:38 AM 8/18/2006, Cqtestk4xs@aol.com wrote:
>
>In a message dated 8/17/2006 2:25:52 A.M. Greenwich Standard Time,
>donovanf@starpower.net writes:
>
>If you're a purist, you could purchase 500 feet of Andrew LDF5-50A, but that
> would set you back about the same amount as your tower and beam!
>
>73!
>Frank
>W3LPL
>
>
>
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
>Good point Frank. If available, CATV is the way to go. Like lots of hams I
>got thousands of feet of this stuff for free and I wish I could have taken
>it with me to KH6.
>
>Let's remember that that most hams are cheap and scavengers by nature. That
>expensive LDF5-50 and its ends often can be gotten at ridiculously low
>prices with some leg work and by keeping your nose to the ground. I once
>picked
>up 3000 some excellent quality LDF5-50 which the guy dropped off at my place
>for $.60 a foot....about the price of new LMR 400. Lots of that stuff WILL
>be
>going to KH6.
>
>One other thing that CATV and Heliax can be buried, a real plus in keeping
>the XYL happy.
>
>Bill K4XS
>_______________________________________________
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