[TowerTalk] Balanced Transmission Line

Steve Jones n6sj at earthlink.net
Sat Feb 24 00:24:56 EST 2018


I use True Ladder Line at trueladderline.com, 16 ga. stranded insulated wire
with about 4" long polyethylene spacers.  I think he said it's 600 Ohms.
I've used it on my 80M dipole for many years to operate on all bands with a
balun and tuner in the shack.

Years ago I built around 500 feet of open wire line with bare 20 ga.
copperweld and 1/4" diameter Plexiglas spacers, about 2" long.  I made a "Y"
shaped tip for my electric soldering iron out of 10 ga. bare copper.  I
strung out 100 feet of parallel wire, then installed the spacers by heating
the wire and pressing the Plexiglas onto it.  Worked great until the
copperweld started breaking due to metal fatigue from wiggling back and
forth in the wind!

73,
Steve
N6SJ

 

-----Original Message-----
From: TowerTalk [mailto:towertalk-bounces at contesting.com] On Behalf Of Riki,
K7NJ
Sent: Friday, February 23, 2018 4:02 PM
To: towertalk at contesting.com
Subject: [TowerTalk] Balanced Transmission Line

I'm currently in the planning stage of replacing a very long length of coax
with open wire line with appropriate transformers at each end.   So far,
I've only been able to find 450 ohm line, commonly called "ladder line" that
has a significant amount of dielectric material between the conductors.
Because of expected UV degradation of the exposed dielectric, I would much
rather use a line that had small rods as spacers.  I had seen such
commercially available lines many years ago, but so far have not been able
to find any online. Also, it could be advantageous to use a higher impedance
line.  In summary, I would very much appreciate information about
commercially available balanced line constructed to minimize UV degradation.
Characteristic impedances (Zo) of 450 ohms and higher are all of interest.
73, Riki, K7NJ

 



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