Topband: Connecting radial systens together- thanks!!!! de W0AH

[W0AH@aol.com]

     Wonderful response from the fraternity.  Thank you all.  
Since my original Hytower and radial system have been up about 10 years (with 
the radials now buried under vegetation), I can't really interconnect the 
radials that cross each other, which several of you recommended.  Several 
said that running a single wire, even large guage wire, between each of the 
three radial systems, would not accomplish anything.  Several others 
disagreed.  Since no one suggested that it could possibly hurt performance, 
and because it is so easy to do, I plan to do it using 1" diameter stranded 
aluminum wire that I am presently using as a 160M radial.

     ANOTHER QUESTION:  My 90' 160M vertical is about 300 feet from the 
house.  I am presently using several pieces of Belden 9913, hardline, and 
some RG-213 with barrel connectors to create a 300' piece of coax.  Today at 
a hamfest I bought 100 meters of CCI/Saxton 8421 M17/16400000 M-C-17 OLWG7 
cable.  I've spent an hour trying to find the specs on this RG-8 size cable 
which has a double braid shielding.  The braid appears to be silver "plated" 
or tinned. Saxton doesn't have a webpage. An hour of searching hasn't 
resulted in any information.  I wonder if anyone on the reflectors knows the 
impedance, velocity factor, and attenuation of this coax or where I could 
find this information.  I'm hoping that 300' of this Saxton cable at 1.8 MHz 
will have less one dB attenuation and be suitable for feeding the vertical so 
that I can use the other hodgepoge of cable, which probably has less 
attenuation, to feed a 4 element 20M beam going on top of the 90' vertical 
for top loading.

Doug  W0AH   ex-W2CRS  K1UGQ  WB2LNA W3IFA  KN8BAJ



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