Topband: Outdoor rope suggestions

[Jim Brown]

On Thu,9/4/2014 8:10 AM, Carl wrote:
> As far as the antenna wire it will likely be #10 or 12 solid deep well 
> motor wire as I have a lot of it salvaged for the asking back when 
> copper was still cheap.

GM Carl,

Be prepared for any copper wire to stretch under the sort of tension 
that I am using and that you plan to use. One of my high dipoles is an 
80/40 fan that I built about six years ago with #10 stranded THHN. Every 
couple of years, I have drop it and cut a foot or two from each end.

Hoping to minimize that, I've been buying #8 solid copper from Home 
Depot and stretching it in the hope of making it hard drawn. W6GJB and I 
tie one end to a tree, the other to the trailer hitch on his pickup, and 
slowly pull until it breaks. We get roughly 10-15% stretch. About six 
months ago, I used some of it to add a reflector to one of my 80M 
dipoles, and pulled the tension tight. It's sagged quite a bit. I 
haven't measured it since.

73, Jim K9YC