looking to the best option for putting up low band wire antennas. I'd
like to put up something for 80 m with a bit of gain headed towards
Europe etc.. I'm considering a half square antenna. But doing the
math for the element says I would need something like 70-80 foot masts
and I'm trying to figure out how to make that happen without full-scale
antenna towers which would freak out the neighbors.

I think another option might be to do linear loading on the vertical
elements of a half square and only go to about 45 foot for the tower
elements. Problem being that most of the fiberglass masts I've seen
only go to about 35 to 40 feet and some of them get pretty whippy (mfj)

another possibility I'm considering if I can build a fairly inexpensive
metal mast to 66 feet (plus 10 feet off ground) is the Spitfire array
http://www.yccc.org/Articles/Spitfire/sld003.htm

again suggestions for how to get 66 feet of metal up in the air would
be interesting. By the way, I do have access to 3 inch aluminum
irrigation tubing. Most of it has been broken into 25 foot lengths so
if that would be useful, advice on how to couple shorter pieces
together for good electrical and mechanical connections would be
welcome.

I would appreciate any suggestions. also, don't worry about e-mailing
me directly in addition to posting to the net. I frequently forget
about web oriented access until weeks later whereas e-mail is in my
face.

--- eric (ka1eec)

speech recognition in use, it makes mistakes, I correct some.

On 17 Oct 2005 18:34:07 -0700, wrote:
looking to the best option for putting up low band wire antennas.

See this November's QST.

Jonesy
--
Marvin L Jones | jonz | W3DHJ | linux
Pueblo, Colorado | @ | Jonesy | OS/2 __
38.24N 104.55W | config.com | DM78rf | SK

yes, that's a very nice antenna design. However, if you notice the
specification they want the center point of the antenna at 80 feet.
like most hams I've got nothing even vaguely resembling 80 foot worth
of antenna support. The best I can do is something around 25 feet but
the trees are are not oriented so that I could get the direction I
desire.

--- eric

Have you considered a temporary support, such as thiose dandy
advertising balloons that hold the colorful flag lines up at mobile
home and used car lots?

KB5YLG