How long of a longwire?
 

How long is too long for a random longwire? I live out in the country with
lots of trees around the house and all over my property - have one 80' wire
from a tree in the side yard, a 45' PAL end-fed wire from chimney to
mast...and not satisfied with overall reception. Feeding both into a Grove
TUN4, then out to R75 and R71. Longer wire? I have 500 ft or so of good
gauge - how long or short should it be for optimum reception? When I lived
in town an 80' wire was great...seems it would be better out here, but it's
not for some reason. Suggestions??

Max length can depend on how robust the front end of the receiver is.
I once had a 450 footer - my R-71a ate it for lunch. The same antenna
blew the brains out of a Sony 2010. (Live and learn. Fortunately the
2010 was under warranty and the Sony repair depot was 4 miles away.)

Years later I had another good one - a 240 footer at about 55 ft high,
going to a Drake R8a and a Yahoo Frog-A-Hunnert.

For your situation .. experiment. My experience is the longer (and
higher) the better. And with the Tun-4 you should be able to tame it
down / tweak it up as needed.

For handling the "higher is better" part - a fishing reel bolted to a
wrist-rocket slingshot with hose clamps is 2nd best. A poor man's E-Z
Hang, if you will. Hey E-Z Hang was on sale at Dayton Hamvention for
$90.00 or so. But for about $20.00 and a trip to the Wal-Mart sporting
goods department, you can make one that works fine.

First best - an archery fishing reel attached to a good hunting bow.
Awesome results if you're a decent archer.

Ok .. the *real* first best is a Lyle gun and a few thousand feet of
rope - but this might be overkill. :-)

"El Dubya" wrote:

For your situation .. experiment. My experience is the longer (and
higher) the better. And with the Tun-4 you should be able to tame it
down / tweak it up as needed.

Experiment, experiment, experiment. Best advice yet. I'd take higher
over longer. I 'spearminted with 1/4 - wavelength verticals with an
elevated feed this spring, and am really surprised. Get 'em 20 feet
off of the ground, and make 'em out of wire. I've been using one with
4 radials for 30 Meter Ham and 31 Meter Shortwave use, and have
found it works really well from about 5 MHz to about 22 MHz for
receive purposes. Barring that, if you're going with a longwire
horizontal,
longer really is better, and get it as high as you can.

For handling the "higher is better" part - a fishing reel bolted to a
wrist-rocket slingshot with hose clamps is 2nd best. A poor man's E-Z
Hang, if you will. Hey E-Z Hang was on sale at Dayton Hamvention for
$90.00 or so. But for about $20.00 and a trip to the Wal-Mart sporting
goods department, you can make one that works fine.

I thougth I was the only one doing that! Here's another good'n. Skip the
slingshot, get a deluxe el-cheapo Zebco 202 or 404 fishin' combo from Wally
World (tm), and put a half - ounce sinker on the end of the line. Cast it
into the
highest tree, and the sinker will drop down to the ground. Clip off the
sinker,
attach wire to the end, and pull it up through the tree. Presto! A nice
folded
vertical that will work really well for shortwave purposes. Oh, yeah....use
well-insulated wire.

73,

Steve

"If you are going through hell, keep going."
-- Winston Churchill

DX99 wrote:
How long is too long for a random longwire? I live out in the country with
lots of trees around the house and all over my property - have one 80' wire
from a tree in the side yard, a 45' PAL end-fed wire from chimney to
mast...and not satisfied with overall reception. Feeding both into a Grove
TUN4, then out to R75 and R71. Longer wire? I have 500 ft or so of good
gauge - how long or short should it be for optimum reception? When I lived
in town an 80' wire was great...seems it would be better out here, but it's
not for some reason. Suggestions??



Once a random-wire gets beyond 1-2 wavelengths long it will start taking
on "longwire" characteristics, namely being directional, low-angle, and
a tad of gain in the direction the wire points. Reception off the sides
and rear may be diminished.

If you can utilize this to your advantage then by all means, go for more
length.

-ex

DX99,

In article AHkne.20531$Ri3.10068@trnddc09,
"DX99" wrote:

How long is too long for a random longwire? I live out in the country with
lots of trees around the house and all over my property - have one 80' wire
from a tree in the side yard, a 45' PAL end-fed wire from chimney to
mast...and not satisfied with overall reception. Feeding both into a Grove
TUN4, then out to R75 and R71. Longer wire? I have 500 ft or so of good
gauge - how long or short should it be for optimum reception? When I lived
in town an 80' wire was great...seems it would be better out here, but it's
not for some reason. Suggestions??

I got to this thread after several people already made good suggestions
but to answer your question directly a random wire that is not cut to a
specific frequency and is intended for reception over a range of
frequencies. The 80 foot wire qualifies.

The other question of why the 80 foot wire is not working as well in the
new location could have a number of reasons. The wire is half an antenna
where the other half is ground so you may not have as good a ground at
the new place. The soil conductivity may be worse at the new place. This
could be made better with a more extensive ground system. An alternative
is to make a complete antenna that does not need ground.

--
Telamon
Ventura, California

sounds great - will check that out, I sure have the trees for it:)


"RHF" wrote in message
oups.com...
DX99,
.
Instead of a Long Wire Antenna.
Why not try a SkyWire Loop Antenna. "Sky Wire" ? ? ?
Check-Out the SkyWire Loop Antenna Group on YAHOO !
For people interested in building and using a SkyWire Loop Antenna.
GoTo= http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SkyWires/
.
One Wave Length for the 120 Meter Shortwave Band
is roughly a 419 Feet Loop Antenna. For Receiving "Only"
use a 4:1, 9:1 or 16:1 Balun and Coax Cable Feed-in-Line.
.
One Wave Length for the 160 Meter Amateur Band is
roughly a 529 Feet Loop Antenna. For both Transmitting
and Receiving use a 1:1 Balun and Coax Cable Feed-in-Line
or a direct connecting using Ladder Line.
.
Any 'shape' Circle/Square/Polygon you can make using
the available Trees with the Wire Antenna Element about
20 Feet above the Ground.
.
The Horizontal "SkyWire" Loop Antenna can be a very
Low Noise Antenna with relatively Strong Signal Levels
due to its large size.
GoTo= http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SkyWires/
.
iane ~ RHF
. . . . .

Look here . .

http://www.hard-core-dx.com/nordicdx...age/index.html

Many different opinions..

- also this . .

http://www.hard-core-dx.com/nordicdx...wire/t2fd.html