With the twine in place at the ends (both trees), with the help of our new
NOGA "wuff-hong" with duct tape sticky-side out, it just a matter of
attaching the wire and pulling it over and securing the ends. The W3EDP antenna is
an Inverted-L, 87' long with about 30 ft up and the rest horizontal. NE to SW. The
bottom of the vertical section of the L was attached to a tuner and the
radials were attached to the tuner case. Coax ran from the tuner back to the
"shack" (short about 20 ft).
For the W3EDP we put an LDG QRP autotuner and 1.2Ah battery in an upside
down Tupperware rectangular storage box with the antenna and radials coming
in from the bottom via slits in the Tupperware top (that is on the bottom).
So we had a waterproof enclosure that was also clear so we can see the SWR LED's
from the operating position about 15 feet away. Worked great until the
battery died (7 volts) and the tuner microprocessor started acting funny. A battery
change at 10 hours solved the problem.
The other inverted-L was about 200 ft long at 30 ft height and we used a manual
tuner that Rick, K4RAB, brough to tune it for either 80 or 160 meters.
Sam built one quaterwave
radial for each band. It was located at the other tree (remote end of the
W3EDP wire) and went East to a pine tree. It's the longest antenna any of us had
ever put up. Coax run was about 100 ft. |