[TowerTalk] Wire antenna in trees? (Patrick Greenlee) (Kelly Taylor) (Jim Brown)

[Terry G. Glagowski / W1TR]

#10 Stranded Insulator wire simply doesn’t break… maybe the rope will though…
One time, a 90 ft pine tree blew over in a storm with my 160m dipole attached to the top…
The antenna wire kept the tree from falling on the power lines on the road, and instead fell laterally and broke into several pieces.
The antenna still worked even with the tree down (SWR changed some) !
I unraveled the wire from this mess and put it back up again… It’s still up there, several ropes have broken though !  that was a dozen years ago!
 
73, Terry / W1TR  :  )
 
From: Mickey Baker [mailto:fishflorida at gmail.com] 
Sent: Saturday, August 05, 2017 11:39
To: W1TR at yccc.org
Cc: towertalk at contesting.com
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Wire antenna in trees? (Patrick Greenlee) (Kelly Taylor) (Jim Brown)
 
Here in Florida where high winds are fairly common, I use the Davis FlexWeave insulated wire and, in the case of loops, "float" the wire, allowing it to slide through insulators at the corners. I terminate it at the ends with dipoles and use 5/16" UV stabilized Dacron line through pulleys to weights keeping it taught. When the trees I use as supports sway, the weights go up and down, keeping a standard load on the wire and moving the friction point a bit to avoid single point wear.
 
It has been up over two years now, gale force winds on a number of occasions and no failures! (Knock wood.)
 
Tough wire. Same as or similar to Wireman Silky.
 
73,
 
Mickey N4MB