I've also seen "messenger line" or more often "messenger wire" used to
describe the steel wire that supports such things as telephone cables
between poles and mains power service drops from the pole to a building.

Roy Lewallen, W7EL

John Ferrell wrote:
I'd never heard of a messenger rope. Sounds interesting. How is the
messenger rope secured to the antenna line? WB8YKH

More properly "messenger line".

This seems to be a difficult item to search so I will attempt to an
explanation...

When two ships meet at sea and wish to transfer items from one ship to
another (think mail, movies, etc.) they must keep a safe distance
between them. The accepted procedure is to throw or otherwise launch a
small rope or line from one to the other. Then a larger line is
attached to the small line and pulled back to the originating ship.
There may be several iterations of this until a line strong enough to
carry the ultimate load is in place. The first line (and may be the
interim lines) that were used to get the final line in place are
refferred to as messenger lines.

I sometimes use a weighted piece of fishing line as the meesenger and
tie the string/rope/wire in place to hang an antenna. It saves a lot
of snagging if you streamline the attaching knot with a bit of tape.

If anyone manages to figure out a search that provides useful results
for "messenger line" I would appreciate the enlightenment!

John Ferrell W8CCW
Beware of the dopeler effect (pronounced dope-ler).
That's where bad ideas seem good if they come at you
fast enough.