TopBand: Balloon suspended 1/2 wave vertical on 160

[Keith Jillings]

David Feldman wrote:
> 
> Would this be re-inventing the wheel? I'm interested in 80 and 160M
> vertical solutions that would not depend on radials; it seems 1/2
> wave would work at first blush. Any thoughts?

If Richard G3OQT doesn't reply first ...

We tried one of these, many years ago, using UK Met Office met balloons.

Fixing the wire to the balloon proved quite fun - in the end, we used a
large net.   That worked fine. 

The biggest problem was that by the time the balloon was 250 feet or so
up, the wind pulled it over to sbout 30 degrees from the horizontal
(depends on wind speed -- I'll let you work out the angles...).   We
fixed that by "guying" it with two long lengths of fishing line.   That
kept it above the ATU in the garden, but then the wind, as it gusted,
caused it to go up and down - with interesting results on the matching.

Then a local farmer thought it was a UFO and took his shotgun to it.

However - in the brief while it was up and tuned, it seemed to work
extremely well.

73

Keith    G3OIT  GW3OIT  ex DJ0MR
-- 
Keith Jillings
amen@earthling.net


--
FAQ on WWW:               http://www.contesting.com/topband.html
Submissions:              topband@contesting.com
Administrative requests:  topband-REQUEST@contesting.com
Problems:                 owner-topband@contesting.com