Okay I am starting this subject so folks can follow my new antenna project. It is being called the FWAP or for your Hillary supporters, the Full wave Antenna Project. It is being posted here for input and suggestions.
I have over analyzed this antenna so based on my ham clubs President I am just going to throw up the wire and adjust length and such once it is up and able to analyze what we gotz.
The Goal:I want to be able to improve on my G5RV plus dipole antenna from its current 10-80 meters running east/west to a more Omani-directional antenna that will receive and send 40-160 meters. 10 - 160 would be better however I am a realist.
The Plan: Based on the tried and sound formula of Length (in feet) = 1005 divided by frequency (in MHz) that means I need a length of wire ~ 558 feet (1005 divided by 1.800 Mhz). Now the wire will be 12 gauge stranded insulated wire it needs to be 4% less in length or now ~ 536 feet. I need to deduct the 450 ohm ladder line to the tuner from the overall length so if my antenna is 40' high, I will need ~ 496 feet of wire in the air (536' minus 40' of ladder line). Based on the fact that bulk 12 gauge wire from your local big box store comes in 500' lengths, I will start there and delete/add wire as needed.
I am between putting a 4:1 voltage balun at the end of the ladder line and then going with 50 ohm coax going from the balun to the Kenwood 590S auto tuner or going direct to a balanced manual tuner. There is the big ham fest in Horseheads, NY at the end of September and will look for a ladder line type manual tuner to play with.
The antenna wire will come into a WA1FFL Ladder Line Locking Center Insulator and then to the ladder line. The connector will be on the east side hopefully giving me a bit of a boost to the west of the loop antennas Omani-directional capabilities.
Each length of this antenna will be close to 125' to keep a nice square. The wire will be level BUT different parts of the antenna will be between 40 to 70' above the sloping property. See the accompanying picture for you to understand the slop I am dealing with. I measure it at as a ~15-20 degree slope. AGAIN, the antenna will be level, it is the ground that will be sloping.
The wire will be hung using a 5/16 Dacron three strand line that will support a Harken type block at each corner. Then the line that supports the actual wire will be fed through the Harken type blocks. The line coming down from the blocks will be supported with garage door springs. Of course this whole shebang will be supported with four trees.
When:I will wait to shoot some lines up on the appropriate trees until early November when most of the leaves in my neck of the woods have succumbed to gravity.
Until then, I am open to input from the learned ham radio group of the forum and encouragement from all.
