[TowerTalk] Hardline splices and W0AIH

[Paul Husby]

Just to set the record straight:

I don't know what K9MA might have heard, but I do not know of any 
instance in the many MILES of feedline installed at the W0AIH contest 
station where there is a splice done in the crude manner Scott described.

Paul did occasionally make some beautiful homebrew splices of larger 
Heliax where he would use a piece of copper tube to make a good friction 
splice of the center conductor, then take a spare chunk of the cable, 
split enough of the corrugated outer conductor to make two pieces to 
sandwich the shields of the two cables to be spliced, solder the 
sandwich in place and seal it up per the usual standards.  I wouldn't do 
it at 1296, but the result is barely detectable at HF.

I will admit to going up to the 40M beam at 200' and making the kind of 
crude splice that Scott described, but that was in the middle of CQWW/CW 
after I accidentally pulled apart the RG8 tail (faulty limit switch on 
the Telrex rotor).  OK at 7MHz for a temporary fix.  And I used tape.  
No pop bottle shields at the Farm to my knowledge.

73
Paul Husby, W0UC
trustee of W0AIH