[VHFcontesting] Antenna ideas

[Paul Decker]

I'd like to ask the group memebers opinion on some vhf/uhf antenna/feedline ideas. 



For background, I've been looking to improve my antenna system.  Currently, all my vhf/uhf antennas are sitting about 4 feet about the roof ridgeline which is about 30 feet.   Each yagi is stacked about 3 feet above the other, 4 ele 50Mhz, 11 ele 144Mhz, then 14 ele 432Mhz. 



I've got a nice pine tree which is about 75 feet tall and the base is about 20 feet taller than my house.   The nice thing is it's cut off at the top (topped).   I've been thinkng about moving my antennas to the top of that tree.   



There seem to be a couple of issues about this:  



1.  Grounding - I guess this could be solved by running a nice fat ground wire down the side of the tree and providing a few nice ground rods. 



2.  The distance from the tree to my shack is about 300 feet.  This is a bit more expensive to solve.   From what I can tell, using LMR-400 would present about 10.5 db loss, so 100 watts would be about 9 watts at the antenna.  Even going to something like Andrew LDF-6 would be 2.2 db loss which is almost loosing half the output power of the xmtr.   But, I'm a big fan of open wire feeders.   What about running open wire feed lines to each antenna?   It's less expensive than the hardline and in some cases, at least for the 600 ohm has lower losses.   Of course I'd have to build baluns and matching transformers on the transmitter end, the antenna end I could adjust to be the same impedance as the twin lead.   



Any thoughts from the group on doing this?   It seems like quite a bit of work and I'm not sure how much return I would get on it. 




73, 
Paul (KG7HF)