John while what you describe is correct, it is not the type of messanger
rope, line, or cable that is being thought of.

In the antenna case, it is a strong rope that is streached between two
supports. To this rope is attached a lighter antenna. Say you only have
some number 20 wire and want to make an 80 meter dipole. If you string the
# 20 wire and attach some rg-8 type coax to the middle of it, it would
probalby not stay up very long. Also you would have to have a large drop in
the middle as you can not streachit very tight without breaking.
If you have a strong rope you can tape and use some ultraviolet resistant
wire ties to attach the antenna wire to the rope and then pull it up
tighter.

I have a tower up 60 feet with several beams on it. While it may not be the
recommended practice, I came off the tower around the 40 foot level and ran
the coax (4 coax +rotor cable) to the house about 50 feet away. I used a
piece of guy wire and taped and ty wrapped the cable to the the guy wire. I
pulled this guy wire tight enough to keep the cable off the ground. This
particular guy wire is not one of the supporting guys, but just a 'messanger
wire' to hold up the coax with out strssing the coax.


OK, I got it!
I usually use Nylon line (home improvement store, about 150 pound
test) for that purpose. You can sure do a lot of experimenting for
very little money that way.

Antennas can be a lot of fun....
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.