"Cecil Moore" wrote in message
...
RJG wrote:
I bought 2 Slinky's to put a Slinky antenna together, and would love to
get
comments and suggestions, (construction detail tips, care and feeding,
etc.)
from anyone who has tried this type of antenna before.

Maybe a better question would be: How many readers
know of anyone who has tried a Slinky antenna and
hasn't discarded it? IMO, one can always do better
than a Slinky dipole.

Perhaps, but I put one together about 30 years ago, hung it on the apartment
wall (inside), and made lots of contacts with it. I just stretched it or
compressed it until the SWR was reasonable. I recall that the tuning was
indeed pretty broad, so I suppose that there was more loss than you might
see with a more conductive wire -- or it could have been due to the effects
of the adjacent wood and plaster. Actually, I may not have had an SWR
meter, but instead tuned the output tank of my Heath Apache for peak and
dip. I miss that boat-anchor.

Still, it was small, and it worked well enough to get me on the air. I
think I used two slinkys soldered together for each leg of the dipole, and
stretched them out to about 15 feet. I operated on 40 meters. There are
better small antennas, but sometimes "good enough is perfect".

-Paul, wb6cxc