[CQ-Contest] awesome upgrades to the 8 band vertical!!

[Peter Barron]

Hi Steve

For 80 & 40 a couple of simple horizontal dipoles or inverted Vee's are
always a good low cost start to get things going. Hang the centers from 3"
PVC or metal pipe fastened to tower top to space them away from tower a
little say 6 feet. And then work on making things play better. Slopers work
for some and not others so be prepared to raise and lower it a lot.

As the top loading on a 50ft tower may not be quite enough for 160 and you
may be better of Shunt feeding the tower with a wire run from just below
beam horizontally for 70-90 ft to make an Inverted L, or two equal wires to
make a "T". I did a quick lash up for the ARRL DX SSB for 80M with 16
radials and it worked very well.

For all my wire antennas I use a marine pulleys (all stainless about $10 US)
to allow either centers or ends to be lowered quickly.  For the halyards I
also use a big cleat from marine stores it makes tying/untying off the ropes
a lot easier even when iced up. The wire varies from The Wireman's  'Silky'
heavy slippery stuff in trees to plain #12 insulated from Home Depot.


Peter
Ve3pn at igs.net