Hi All,
Decided not to do the WPX this weekend, but spent the better part of Sat
and Sun spreading 51 yards of loam to fix up all the concrete truck/crane
ruts in my lawn, and i'm happy to say I will soon have the nicest lawn in
the neighborhood again. For all you guys that wonder how much 51 yards is,
it's 3 full 10 wheeler dump trucks, or one trailer dump and one 10 wheeler.
Yup, it's alot of dirt. The tower made it worthwhile though.
This afternoon I cut up some old Moseley tribanders and made a full sized
40 meter rotatable dipole. Well, almost a dipole-right now it's a 66' long
piece of aluminum tubing :)
Here's a few questions for the group- for the guys that have done this
before, or maybe someone has a neat idea for me to try.
1. What's the best way of mounting this? I was thinking of using a 1" piece
of fiberglass if I can find it, or maybe doing something with one of the
Moseley TA series center insulators I have, and trying to beef it up somehow.
I basically have two choices from what I see-split it in the middle and
feed it directly or try to hairpin match it.
I'm interested in hearing what others have for thoughts on this. Obviously
the feeding arrangement will have an effect on what is used for mounting.
The dipole is 1 1/8" OD in the center tapering down to 1/4" at the tips.
Even used solid stock from an old low-band groundplane commercial antenna
for the ends of the elements-has neat little corona balls on it too! Most
of the tubing is double thickness, but it still droops about 8' from center
to end, so I will be putting a vertical truss on it.
2. Side trussing-since it has alot of flex in the elements, should I let it
stay like that, or shud I truss it on both sides too, to try and eliminate
some of the flexing-it's mounted at the 10' level on the tower right now,
with a piece of rope for a truss and it was fairly windy today-about 30-40
mph gusts all afternoon, and the elements really bent sideways even at 10'.
I was thinking of putting a pair of side trusses on it, at abt the 15'
point out from the center on each side. (also the same point as the
vertical truss)
My plan is to stand this off either the tower and fix it east/west, or put
it right on the mast and make it rotatable.
My neighbors are really goin to love this one....hehehe
What say all?
Scott
KA1CLX
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