Metal kite reel for portable longwire...
 

Hello. I spent a night building a portable longwire out of scrap acetal,
stainless steel wire and a few other scrap parts. It works well but not as
fast to use as I'd like, and the shape for stowing means it's not a circular
coil and there is no guide to keep it winding easily without overrunning the
edge of the former.

To make something that can be set up and taken down so easily I could do it
at a run, I looked at two existing widgets that might do very well: Centrepin
fishing reels, and kite winders. I settled on the kite winder as being
slightly cheaper, more durable, etc.. eBay listing 270879102395 shows the one
I'm interested in. I haven't bought it yet, because a question remains...

Assuming I start at some tree on open ground and run the wire to where I want
to set up the receiver, I will usually leave some wire on the reel. The reel
is about 28 cm wide, about 25 mm along axis, and entirely made of stainless
steel. Is the metal attached to the antenna wire in this way going to affect
its ability too much, even if I take care to prevent electrical contact with
the ground?

Alternatively, I can lay in an plastic channel inside the reel to insulate
the wire from the rest of the reel, and modify the guide to contact the wire
while insulating it from the bulk of the wheel, which in turn might make a
convenience of a connector mounted on its chassis, so the bulk metal becomes
part of the ground, but then the question is this: Would the capacitance
formed across that insulating channel be enough to adversely affect the
longwire performance, bearing in mind that as well as LW I'm also interested
in using this method to listen to HF up to around 20 MHz too?

Another question.. I'm considering a similar (but less demanding) idea for
laying out radials for a temporary ground. For ease and speed these would
have to be laid out on the ground, and the receiver will be battery powered,
so this would be its only electrical reference to the ground. Is this ok, or
is there some better way to make a portable ground? Meaning, something I can
carry on foot for miles with little effort.

Metal kite reel for portable longwire...
 

On Tuesday, September 9, 2014 12:47:29 PM UTC-5, Lostgallifreyan wrote:

Assuming I start at some tree on open ground and run the wire to where I want

to set up the receiver, I will usually leave some wire on the reel. The reel

is about 28 cm wide, about 25 mm along axis, and entirely made of stainless

steel. Is the metal attached to the antenna wire in this way going to affect

its ability too much, even if I take care to prevent electrical contact with

the ground?

No, it should be fine. I would prevent contact with the ground though.

Metal kite reel for portable longwire...
 

Try a camping goods store -- find a camper's clothesline
reel. They are plastic and might just be what you need.

Irv VE6BP

Metal kite reel for portable longwire...
 

Metal kite reel for portable longwire...
 

Irv Finkleman VE6BP wrote in
:

Try a camping goods store -- find a camper's clothesline
reel. They are plastic and might just be what you need.


Neat, and I like the totally enclosing design, but I think maybe too hard to
modify in useful ways. The kite winder looks most useful, I can mount a
socket on it, and hardware to anchor it easily in various ways. I even have
space to mount a small DC motor with idler wheel drive to the rim, and mount
a NiMH cell or two to operate it. :)

That sounds like overkill, but tonight after discovering just how amazing 50m
of stainless wire on high ground in open country can be, I found that my one-
night bodge with the scrap parts is ok for unwinding, just, and terrible for
winding. After ten metres I decided it was better to scrap the unwound wire
and bundle it into a pocket for later disposal, than to try to make my cold
fingers try to guide any more of it back onto my awful spool design in the
dark while stumbling on rough ground. I decided then and there that 100 quid
would not be too much to spend to never have to face that again. :) I think
I can get luxury for less than fifty, too. The main thing I want to figure
out will be stowing it at speed, even at a run. That will leave much more
time to be spent much more usefully.

For anyone reading this, and having any interest in the Tecsun PL-390 radio
and anything I said about it in other posts recently, here's the context so
far: With 100 turns on the end of the ferrite rod to modify it so the ring
terminal on the RF input jack is used for an AM longwire, instead of barely
detecting a Southampton NDB from Bristol, I now get several from France, the
furthest being Poitiers. As the Southampton NDB was detected by the
unaltered PL-390 with no possibility of external AM antenna, at 48 miles,
having only a 15nm range, the PL-390 is better at LW DX than many people
claim, and with the modification and a longwire, it's amazing.

Metal kite reel for portable longwire...
 

"Lostgallifreyan" wrote in message
. ..
Hello. I spent a night building a portable longwire out of scrap acetal,
stainless steel wire and a few other scrap parts. It works well but not as
fast to use as I'd like, and the shape for stowing means it's not a
circular
coil and there is no guide to keep it winding easily without overrunning
the
edge of the former.


snip


Another question.. I'm considering a similar (but less demanding) idea for
laying out radials for a temporary ground. For ease and speed these would
have to be laid out on the ground, and the receiver will be battery
powered,
so this would be its only electrical reference to the ground. Is this ok,
or
is there some better way to make a portable ground? Meaning, something I
can
carry on foot for miles with little effort.

I have experimented with and demonstrated (ham fairs, Field Day) shortened
HF antennas, like the Hamstick and Hustler brands. These require radials
and I had been attaching them by nuts and bolts to the metallic base upon
which I place the mag-mount antenna. I carried several bases, each with
radials for a different band.

This is not your exact situation, I realize, but the latest version of my
radials might be useful: I have several short "pigtail" leads bolted to one
base. Each one is terminated in a banana jack and I have pre-cut pairs of
tuned radials with banana plugs on them. Several sets of my tuned radials
are ready to be unwound from foot-square cardboard frames, stretched out and
plugged into the jacks. The cardboard frames are simply the lids from
cardboard boxes. I notched out a few square inches at each end to form a
flat spool. Tangling is minimal. Presently I can deploy 8 radials. (Per
some discussions I have read, improvements gained by using more than 8
radials might not be audible.)

My radials are never exactly straight and it doesn't seem to matter. I have
not staked them, so to reduce the potential tripping hazard to the visitors.
I might use a small stone at the far end.

Your question, "Is this ok?" will be answered Yes by me. With only two
radial wires laid upon the ground, my antenna was entirely satisfactory.
From Southern California, we reliably worked the middle of the US with 100W
on 20m SSB during Field Day last year. However, having only two radial
wires gave a "best VSWR" no lower than 2:1 with the analyzer. The tuner
could fix that but adding another pair of radials brought the best VSWR down
to about 1.5:1.

I hope this also works for your long-wire. I am not at home, so I can't do
play-time for another week :-)

"Sal"
KD6VKW

Metal kite reel for portable longwire...
 

Would a garden hose(pipe) reel work (30 cm-ish diameter)? used one for
microphone cords and it winds up nicely. I imagine alligator-clipping
onto the wire at the reel might do for a feed.

Metal kite reel for portable longwire...
 

Eric Weaver wrote in
:

Would a garden hose(pipe) reel work (30 cm-ish diameter)? used one for
microphone cords and it winds up nicely. I imagine alligator-clipping
onto the wire at the reel might do for a feed.



How big are your pockets, exactly? :) Ok, I won't be pocketing a kite reel
any time soon, but it is somethign immediately manageable on foot for a few
miles. Last time I saw a hose reel it was a lot bigger than this kite reel. I
only need to spool a few hundred metres at most, of some thin stainless wire,
and possible another similar reel to take a few radial wires so I can quickly
lay them out. last time I tested, I had no need, I found a golf course, it
has these low metal platforms about the size of a small car, where people tee
off from. As I put 100 or so turns on one end of the ferrite rod, the current
that ground has to handle is very small anyway. Those little platforms seem
to make nice ground planes. :)

Metal kite reel for portable longwire...
 

"Sal M. O'Nella" wrote in
:

This is not your exact situation, I realize, but the latest version of
my radials might be useful: I have several short "pigtail" leads bolted
to one base. Each one is terminated in a banana jack and I have pre-cut
pairs of tuned radials with banana plugs on them. Several sets of my
tuned radials are ready to be unwound from foot-square cardboard frames,
stretched out and plugged into the jacks. The cardboard frames are
simply the lids from cardboard boxes. I notched out a few square inches
at each end to form a flat spool. Tangling is minimal. Presently I can
deploy 8 radials. (Per some discussions I have read, improvements
gained by using more than 8 radials might not be audible.)


This is a nice idea. My current tests are LW AM so I'm only after enough
ground to get a reasonable current through the coil I put on the ferrite rod,
and so far, so good. (And LW radials could be very very long if I ever had to
transmit anything and do it right). I do want to try them for HF too though,
when I get into that, so thanks, this portable method looks like being
useful. I'd imagioned I might need up to 14 radials or so, but certainly all
the guidance I found says 20 or more is diminishing returns.

Metal kite reel for portable longwire...
 

"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.

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.

Metal kite reel for portable longwire...
 

Metal kite reel for portable longwire...
 

Metal kite reel for portable longwire...
 

On Friday, September 12, 2014 12:28:39 AM UTC-5, Lostgallifreyan wrote:
wrote in news:b9abc58c-547e-47ea-b126-

:



Stick it in one of

my stands which lets it rotate,



That will be my big incentive right there. :) Rotating an antenna to select

better signal strength ratios, and to get a sense of where it comes from, was

the first thing I missed with the longwire, despite the obvious improvements.

I'll still be messing with extending a wire in other directions first though,

before trying to build a magnetic loop. I'll also want to explore the

bevarage matching transformer I bought a few years ago and never before had

the space to explore it properly.

I generally prefer the loops vs a random wire. In the daytime with
ground wave, no contest. With the loop you can almost totally null
daytime ground wave signals. At night, much less directional with the
sky wave, but the station will still often sound better using the loop.
I did a test in 2002 between a 16 inch round loop, and a 42ft "T" vertical
with a 120 ft long flat top wire. That would be fairly similar to using
a long random wire as far as overall performance.

This is the portion of the old post. The audio files are still on
my server. If you shrink your player down so you can watch the time,
and see the text at the same time, you can hear the changes between
the two antennas, and know when I'm steering in a different direction.
Note how I can make an offending ground wave station totally vanish.

Quote from old post..
I have this feeling I don't know what I am supposed to experience from a
working loop.

Anyone have a mp3 file which can show what happens using a loop?

Here is one I did in 2002 comparing my 16 inch circle loop
vs my T vertical on the BC band.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I did a few quick comparisons between a 16 inch loop, and my "T"
vertical, which is about 42 ft tall, with a 120 ft long flat top wire.
It's pretty hot on MW. The radio was my ic-706mk2g. I'll let the
recordings speak for themselves.
You can click on the URL for the sound files, and your media player
"should" bring them right up and start playing. Hopefully anyway...

I did three tests, on three different frequencies, at different times
in the evening. I'm in Houston, and used mainly San Antonio as the
"target" city. "good 200 miles away" I recorded each test. I did
compress the audio greatly to save d/l time, but the audio is still
good enough to tell which is best. The files are pretty small and will
d/l quickly. They were huge files in the original sample rate and
format...I will "narrate" each test, so you will know which antenna
was used, and the exact times I switched. You can use the counter in
the media player to keep track of the time.

Test #1 was at about 7:30 PM on 550 kc.
http://home.comcast.net/~nm5k/mwtest1.mpeg
"Time in seconds"
0-13 -----loop
13-26 -----wire
26-38 -----loop
At 38 seconds I nulled the station, so you can hear the null.
46 -----loop, back pointed to the station
57-69 -----wire
69-end -----loop

Test #2 was at about 8:00 PM on 680 kc.
http://home.comcast.net/~nm5k/mwtest2.mpeg
"Time in seconds"
0-11 -----loop
11-23 -----wire
At 37 seconds I nulled the station
46 -----back pointed to the station
55-67 -----wire
67-end -----loop

Test #3 was at about 9:00 PM on 570 kc. Multiple stations on this
freq...
http://home.comcast.net/~nm5k/mwtest3.mpeg
"Time in seconds"
0-10 ----loop
10-23 ----wire
23-37 ----loop
37-48 ----wire
At 62 seconds, I turn the loop 90 degrees to get a totally different
station.
At 74, I turned back to the first station.
85 ----turned back to 2nd station again
91 ----back to the first

Here is another one on the BC where I turn the loop to null the
station.
http://home.comcast.net/~nm5k/mwtest4.mpeg
At first the station is nulled, and you can hear
a Mexican station in the background. At about 12 seconds,
I turn to the desired station. At 20 seconds I switch to
the T vertical. At 30 seconds I go back to the loop.
At 40 seconds, I null the station again.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
End of old post..

One fairly simple design using PVC for the frame..
http://home.comcast.net/~nm5k/loop5.jpg

Metal kite reel for portable longwire...
 

Metal kite reel for portable longwire...
 

Lostgallifreyan wrote in
:

stuff

'stiff'.. :)

Metal kite reel for portable longwire...
 

On Saturday, September 13, 2014 1:00:11 PM UTC-5, Lostgallifreyan wrote:


Those files are very convincing. :) As well as the orientation there seems to

be a vast improvement based on capturing energy at a small region in space, a

long wire seems to mush out the signal maybe partly due to occupying so much

space. Maybe I misundrstand, but it does seem like the spatial resolution of

a loop's small occupancy has a direct relation to the resolution of the

demodulated signal.

The 50m wire is not going to be too directive on such low frequencies.
It's not acting as a long wire or beverage. It's way too short.
It's just a random wire and will be fairly non directional on LW and MW.
So you pretty much hear everything on freq, and it can sound like mush
if multiple stations are being heard.




I think someone posted some design notes or links during one of my first

threads a month or so ago. I'll look at your loop in detail (I like the

narrow but stuff gauge of UPVC pipe (I'll maybe chose a black 20mm conduit

because that's easy and cheap to get here, and I've used it for other stuff

too), and hopefully I'll figure out a good waterproof capacitor for loop

tuning too.

Being as the caps used are generally old broadcast variables and such,
you could just have a plastic cover over it. But I use all mine indoors
where I can turn them, and don't worry about that. I'm not going to sit
out in the rain to listen to a radio. :/

The type PVC doesn't matter much as long as it's rigid enough to keep
from bending with the wire tension.
I've built them from the usual white PVC which I think is 3/4 inch OD,
and I've got a big one that uses a thick 2-3 inch?? or so piece as a mast,
and 3/4 inch PVC run though drilled holes on the thick PVC mast. So pretty
much only two pieces not counting the T's. The 16 inch loop you heard
on the recording is about 12 or so turns wound on a plastic blower housing
with a mount on the back.

It's a round loop, and sits on the floor in one of my stands. It can
tune the whole MW band. The big loop I have which is a 44x44 inch diamond,
uses a cap out of an old stereo. It has multiple gangs which I can switch
in and out. I think it tunes from around 500 to 2000 kc or so.. And lower
if I tack on extra fixed caps.




One question: Is this going to be good using the 100 or so turns I put on the

end of the PL-390 ferrite rod? Hopefully this is the ideal way to couple the

signal into the radio, because it will make life very easy if it is.

I have no idea what you mean by the PL-390 ferrite rod.. Sounds like a
small antenna on it's own with 100 turns of wire.. ??

I feed the small loops with either a single turn coupling loop to coax,
or if you use a portable you can just use the ferrite bar antenna in the
radio, and close couple it to the loop by holding them close together and
finding the sweet spot where you get max signal.
Of course if you did that, you would want to rig a mount to hold the radio
in place.

I fed all mine with coax, usually to my IC-706mk2g. I remember one time
I tried the 16 inch loop on a AC Delco car radio that was in my truck.
It was hot as a firecracker using that loop for an antenna. Much better
than the truck whip.

Some will speculate that the balance could suffer from using coax directly
to a single turn coupling loop with no balun, etc.. But it's never been
a problem for me. You can tell by the deep nulls I get, that balance
is not an issue. I can make daytime ground wave signals totally vanish
if I null them out, and the nulls are inline with the loop and not
skewed. So no problemo using that feed method here.. :|

Metal kite reel for portable longwire...
 

Metal kite reel for portable longwire...
 

Hello again. Not forgotten... Still doing other stuff but I try to return to
this especially as colder nights mean less chances I'll want to spend hours
in the dark on open land messing with long wires... :)

While looking at your JPG with the loop design I did an entirely gratuitous
bit of graphic editing because I find bright backgrounds hard to handle when
lookign at things for a long time. Do you want a copy? If so, let me knwo
where I can send it..

I notice you mentioned a 'pancake' or 'solenoid' choice of coil that partly
answers the question I asked on the 16th, but I'm not sure what the
difference makes, and there is also the possibility of winding a flat spiral.
What difference do these variations make on reception? Also, is there a
specific advantage of the spaced turns (solenoid, as used in your design)
rather than making a simple circle of windings, that overcomes the
inconvenience of what is a fairly fragile and awkward shape to carry on foot
for long distances? I'm looking for some advice on this because even though I
can build this as it is, I want to try to organise the order I do things in.
I'm still workign on my beverage reel thing, had to wait for a drill that I
just paid for and started using only last night.. It also means I should be
able to build other things now.