[TowerTalk] Hanging wire antennas

[Pete Smith]

At 09:29 AM 7/30/97 -0400, mike wrote:
>my choice is the pvc. i have had mine up for about four years now and it
>hasn't broke yet. the kind you want to use is the schudule 80, it is
>strong enough to hold it up even using alot of tension. if you want you
>can tie a piece of rope from the end back to the tower. i have a length
>of 6 feet i am using now with no end support and it has been fine.
>               73's to all Mike KE4LGL
>

I tried to do this to support the top of my K3LR-style lazy-vee array,
which involves a LOT of downward tension, and I'm here to report you can
break the stuff.  Sounds like a shotgun, even from 100 ft up.  Then you
start dodging the pieces.

Subsequently, I took new galvanized pulleys and shackles up the tower, and
hooked one over tower rungs at the appropriate height.  Ran some dacron
braided line up, through the pulleys, and down to ends of the antennas to
serve as "halyards."  Both for these and for some inverted vees, this works
great.  Even with the IVs, I found it was easy to tilt them just ever so
slightly away from the tower - maybe 88 degrees rather than 90 to the
ground  - and let out a couple of feet of the halyard line.  The resulting
pull away from the tower is adequate and completely secure.

 

73, Pete Smith N4ZR
n4zr@contesting.com 


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