"Art Unwin" wrote in message
...

Tell you what, get some wire twice the WL of the frequency you are
interested in.
Wind a close coil any diameter with it until half the wire is used
then change direction and come back
without changing wire winding direction and wind the wire on top of
the first coil where you finish with two wires to feed.
Put a variometer in series with it and then get on the air. Now this
is not exactly in equilibrium because one coil is a larger diameter
than
the other. Nor is the wire pre twisted pair which nullifies near field
noise to my thinking. Now you have a helix style antenna but without
the helix.
Coat the antenna with an alkyd type solution before you slide it off
the tube since the inside coil must be exposed the same way the
outside coil is exposed


OK, I can do most of that. However, I went to your page for some variometer
details, as I don't have one. No luck. From other reading it appears to be
a loosely couple balun or un-un. But near there on your page, I discovered
some verbiage about building an antenna and saw the reference to a 12-inch
diameter. Good find, as I was going to go smaller.

If I wound the thing on cardboard (like a big empty ice cream tub from the
ice cream store), could I avoid having to take the coil(s) off the form?
What about a paint bucket or an empty pool chlorine tub? I'd sorta like to
skip that alkyd step. Messy.

Need more variometer data, but I'll dig for that