Topband: 1000 feet 5/8" hardline or 600ohm True Ladder lin

[Kenneth Silverman]

Rune,

Back in 1997 N6BV and I did some testing using "ladder line" (not the real
600 ohm stuff) and some 9:1 baluns on each end.  We were looking at a site
in YV where the beach was about 1000' from the hotel room. We tested the
following:
- loss in back to back baluns
- loss in 100' of ladder line and baluns on each end

We tested 160 to 10m.  We lost the data but I seem to remember the total
loss on 80/160 with 1000' of line was negligible.  Maybe in the 2 dB range
on 10m with 1000' of ladder line.

A few of us went to the YV location to run the IARU contest with the 1000'
run of ladder line, using a single vertical on the beach.  The system
worked well, except when there was rain (varying SWR), or coconuts and palm
fronds fell and broke the line.

I just talked to N6BV and he said the ARRL Labratory recently did some
careful measurements on matched-line losses for open-wire line for input to
Dean's TLW program.  There is a new executable that contains the algorithms
for loss computation.

Good luck, Kenny K2KW