[TowerTalk] Wire

[Dave Sublette]

Thanks to your excellent advice, all the rope and pulleys for rebuilding
the 80M foursquare are on order and being shipped.  Jim, K9YC mentioned his
experience with Flexweave and got me to thinking.  My 80 meter dipoles in
the foursquare array are made from #13 Flexweave.  Now I didn't have
breaking problems like Jim did because the weak link in my system was the
center insulators.  The wires and sometimes the feedline pulled out.  They
were the Batwing things that TenTec sold.  So I finally made some from
cutting boards and replaced them.

My problem with the Flexweave is trying to rework connections on the old
wire.  That wire grows copper oxide unlike any other wire I have ever
seen.  It is the dickens to clean it off so it will take solder or crimp
connections.

So I am considering just cutting new dipoles fromTHHN, probably #14.  There
won't be nearly the stress that K9YC experiences since they are hanging
vertically.  There is probably no more than 150 pounds of tension on the
top half as it is pulled out from the tower and the tower doesn't move in
the wind like a tree would.

So I think the stretch problem would be minimum and the strength ought to
be adequate for my use.

Anyone see anything wrong with that?

73,

Dave, K4TO