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Old September 12th 14, 06:04 AM posted to rec.radio.amateur.antenna
[email protected] nm5k@wt.net is offline
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First recorded activity by RadioBanter: Jul 2006
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Default Metal kite reel for portable longwire...

On Thursday, September 11, 2014 9:02:38 PM UTC-5, Lostgallifreyan wrote:
"Sal M. O'Nella" wrote in

:



Your question, "Is this ok?" will be answered Yes by me.




Ok. Any thoughts on the capacitance if I lay insulation into the kite reel

and leave spare antenna wire on it and ground the bulk of the reel? I'm

guessing it's not critical but I wouldn't want to mess up the tuning

frequency. A bit of lost signal I can manage.


You have such a high level at those frequencies worrying about
any of that is basically a waste of time. You could lose 3/4 of
the rf from that length of a long wire and still have plenty on
LW and MW. And tuning is going to be very non critical.
No matter what you do with the reel, I doubt you will notice any
real difference in performance. And if you do have losses, it
won't matter as you will still have enough, and the s/n ratio will
be the same no matter what level you end up with.
So just throw it out, hook it up, and listen to the radio.

Myself, I wouldn't even bother with a long wire unless there was some
specific reason for that pattern, or maybe using as a beverage.
I'd be dragging one of my small loops out there. Stick it in one of
my stands which lets it rotate, and I'd be done and listening.