Your in the right area, but you might want to use a POTATO CANON - like the
fisherman due at the beach to get the line out a couple hundred yards.

They use a metal pipe or heavy duty plastic pipe, with 1 end buried in the
sand and a small pinhole to light it off (for safety, you could use some
kind of fuse in the hole)..

Most of them use hairspray and a piece of POTATO with the hook embedded in
it.. abt 4-5 squirts of the hairspray and the potato.

My $00.02
73's

"Edward Feustel" wrote in message
...

"AC7PN" wrote in message
oups.com...
I need to clear a grove of 100ft pine trees and it just ain't
happenning. My sling shot is only making it to a height of about 70ft.
Way short.

I've built a canon from sched 40 PVC with a 4" section reduced to a to
1" section which is about 4ft long. I'm using lighter fluid and a spark
ignition. A 1" dowel weighted with 2oz of lead fits in the 2" PVC with
a close fit. This still doesn't get over the grove of trees. It seems
the lighter fluid just doesn't have enough power. Maybe I'm putting in
too much or not enough fluid. How do you know if you have the right
fuel air mix? I've heard that some use butane or propane in these.

Thanks
Bob Brunius

Based on my last experience, I suggest that you borrow a compound hunting
cross bow
and no-point fishing arrows (they are substantially heavier) with at least
a 50 lb pull.
Use a fishing reel with fishing line that is light but strong. If the line
is too light it will
probably break. Use the fishing line to pull over twine or something
heavier and
then a multicore Dacron rope. Allow for enough line to go over the "grove"
by about 3 times

I use the end ropes to support pulleys and lines through the pulleys to
support the
antennas. One pulley rope is tied off. The other has 5 8-gallon
containers of
anti-freeze that serve as the balancing counterweight for the 220 foot
antenna
of #10 copperweld that is centerfed with 600 ohm ladder line.

Regards,
Ed, N5EI

local ham here with lots of trees similar found an archer in his group.

He told him what he wanted and the archer even asked what branch and
which side. Hit them all with perfect precision. Using heavy test
they then pulled small rope then larger and larger rope back and forth.

Last heavy duty rope loop had a pulley with pull rope already strung
through.

Find an archer rather than try it yourself.


Scotty W7PSK

"AC7PN" wrote in message
oups.com...
I need to clear a grove of 100ft pine trees and it just ain't
happenning. My sling shot is only making it to a height of about 70ft.
Way short.

I've built a canon from sched 40 PVC with a 4" section reduced to a to
1" section which is about 4ft long. I'm using lighter fluid and a spark
ignition. A 1" dowel weighted with 2oz of lead fits in the 2" PVC with
a close fit. This still doesn't get over the grove of trees. It seems
the lighter fluid just doesn't have enough power. Maybe I'm putting in
too much or not enough fluid. How do you know if you have the right
fuel air mix? I've heard that some use butane or propane in these.

Thanks
Bob Brunius


Bob,
When I was a kid I had a "Big Bang" cannon that used powdered carbide and
water. It used about 1/10 a teaspoon of carbide and about a half a cup of
water as soon as it quit fizzing you ignited it with a flint striker.
Ace - WH2T

Well, thanks for all the replies. I got my "potato gun/canon" to work
well today. I have a remote trigger to set the canon off so if the pipe
explodes I wont be hit. Hair spray is the answer. The guys at the local
autoparts store had already researched the different brands and had a
convicted opinion about what was best. I bought a can of that stuff.
3seconds of spraying works well.

But now I have a new problem. When the thing went off the 4lb fishing
line played out for about 8 seconds. It's still connected to the
projectile but after seaching the woods for an hour I couln't find it.
The trouble is I don't know how far it went. 100ft 100yards or
100miles. The 4lb fishing line is invisalbe from more than a few feet
away.

What now?

Tonight I'm making some more projectiles. It's looking like I'm not
goint ot be on the air for this weekends CQ 160M TEST.

Bob Brunius

AC7PN wrote:

...
But now I have a new problem. When the thing went off the 4lb fishing
line played out for about 8 seconds. It's still connected to the
projectile but after seaching the woods for an hour I couln't find it.
The trouble is I don't know how far it went. 100ft 100yards or
100miles. The 4lb fishing line is invisalbe from more than a few feet
away.

What now?
...

Drag a rake perpendicular to the direction of the line, across the lines
path carefully watching?

Once you find the line, you got the projectile ...

Regards,
JS

AC7PN wrote:
projectile but after seaching the woods for an hour I couln't find it.
The trouble is I don't know how far it went. 100ft 100yards or
100miles. The 4lb fishing line is invisalbe from more than a few feet
away.

1) Paint your projectiles blaze orange.
2) Use a heavier fishing line, it sound like you have the power to
launch it now.
3) Tie the trailing end of your fishing line to a big rock or your ankle
or something that won't be dragged into flight.

You're almost there -- see you on 160!!
--
HZ

I paint my lead sinkers bright yellow and it is a breeze to spot them. W4lm
"Hank Zoeller" wrote in message
...
AC7PN wrote:
projectile but after seaching the woods for an hour I couln't find it.
The trouble is I don't know how far it went. 100ft 100yards or
100miles. The 4lb fishing line is invisalbe from more than a few feet
away.

1) Paint your projectiles blaze orange.
2) Use a heavier fishing line, it sound like you have the power to launch
it now.
3) Tie the trailing end of your fishing line to a big rock or your ankle
or something that won't be dragged into flight.

You're almost there -- see you on 160!!
--
HZ

AC7PN wrote:
Well, thanks for all the replies. I got my "potato gun/canon" to work

No doubt in my mind. This is the best thread I've seen in here so far
this year!
--
HZ

The canon worked pretty well after a lot of "revisionizing" of the
design. I now have a 1000ft inverted V antenna. I runs on the tops of
the trees and is stretched to the very tip top of my 80ft tower on the
hill top. The coax runs about 400 ft through the woods to the Western
terminus of the V. To give a counter poise I ran three 120ft radials
from the starting point of the coax and the V. It probably needs more
radials but it doesn't need as many as a 1/4wave vertical because the
driving point impedance is about 10x greater than the vertical. So I
have a home brew 500ohm to 50ohm transformer at the driving point to
match the coax. It loads up with a less than 1.8:1 SWR from 1.8 MHz
to 29MHz. It is slightly directional to the East according to NEC
simulations.

Running this antenna was fraught with frustration. I used 4lb test
line shot from the canon. Missing was frequent and that light line
would be blown by the wind into trees that it shouldn't be in. The
line would often break before getting the job done requiring redoing.
I did pull 40lb test before pulling the insulated wire. The wire is 8
#22 conductors in a grey UV resistant ribbon.The antenna wire got
stuck in the guys of the tower a number of times requiring climbing
the tower 3 times. (That reminds me I have one guy on the tower
currently disconnected.) It seemed that the whole project was fighting
me tooth and nail.

It works though. I used it in the CQ 160M CW contest this weekend. I
couldn't stay up very late being exhausted from building the antenna
so I only worked about 6 hours total over two evenings. Made 115
contacts. I'm not so hot at CW. I can answer a CQ OK but if I call CQ
I get all panicked and fail to operate especially when three guys
answer at once at 35 WPM.

Bob Brunius

Bob, ya did good.... You got an interesting new antenna up... You got
your CW dusted off... You had fun I hope in the process...

Don't worry about your CW.. Keep jumping into the weekend contests,
even if only for a half hour... The biggest skill in handling multiple
callers is learning to latch onto a specific sound and mentally
ignoring the other callers... Only practice can teach your brain that
skill... Just keep jumping in... Before you know it you will run a
frequency without giving it a second thought...

I can't stay up all night anymore either... That is where having a
buddy to operate with helps...

denny / k8do