ARROW Communications Association

Nov. 7, 2007
The evening of episode 3 found me in the front yard with my fishing pole and 2 ounce weight, ready to at least put one new rope over a 40 foot tree. It was getting dark (I had just gotten there after work), and I wound up and made the first cast. I felt no weight on the fishing line, though, and then heard the weight descend through the leaves far out in the woods. It had torn itself right off the line and was lost to the ages. I gave up and went to the store, where I bought some new 20 pound braided dacron line (teflon coated, too!), a couple of pulleys, and some ONE ounce weights. Then made plans to get back to it before Sweepstakes CW weekend.

By chance I had the Thursday before SSCW off from work, and at 10:30A I was at my new house to get started on the next phase of antenna construction and installation. It was darned cold for early November - cloudy and windy, about 27 degrees F, but I hoped it would warm up. Then it started to snow lightly, huge clumpy flakes floating down.

I got out the 80m dipole I had constructed, and also the fishing pole, one ounce sinker, pulleys, and assorted lengths of rope. I cast the one ounce weight over the 40 foot tree in the front yard, and it went at least twice the height of the tree, but the wind blew the light line completely off the tree before it touched it. I tried again, and got a piece of the tree, but far to one side, too low, and on a flimsy little branch. I slowly reeled in the weight so as not to make it wrap itself around a branch and cast again. And again. The wind kept taking the line away. Finally I got a good shot putting the line directly over the top of the tree (and a second, smaller tree beyond it).

I reeled a rope over the tree, tied a pulley to it, threaded a second rope through the pulley, and pulled the pulley up to the top of the tree. This was MUCH harder than it sounds, as the pulley kept getting hung up in small crotches in the branches, and I had to pull it back and tug it over the obstacles repeatedly. Finally I had it in place. Then I laid the dipole out in relative position between the tall tree in the back yard where I already had a rope going over a branch about 80 feet up. The back yard is about 10-15 feet lower than the front yard, so the disparity in height wasn't as great as you might think.

The 80m dipole was definitely far too long, so I pulled the wire ends through the insulators until about 18-20 feet hang down on both ends. I knew this would not do the antennas performance good, but it wouldn't hurt it too badly either. Unfortunately, the antenna would have to be worked up over the corner of the roof of the house - an added pain.

I pulled it up in the air, had to lower it to shorten it a few feet more, and finally got the feedpoint up as high as I could, about at the peak of the house - perhaps 35-40 feet up - not too bad a height, though I would certainly like it much higher. I ran inside out of what had now become something of a blizzard, shaking a quarter inch of snow off my hat and coat, and applied the MFJ 259 antenna analyzer. I recorded the results in a spreadsheet and even generated graphs to show the SWR curves on different bands. I also recorded the reactance and resistance so I could see where the antenna was really resonant, i.e. X=0.

The antenna was pretty good on 80m, and not too good elsewhere, though in most cases the SWR was not bad. (I realized this was partly the 100' of RG-58 feeding it - SWR was being reduced by the losses in the coax where it didn't tune well.)

Then I cut a pair of 32-33' wires, went back outside in the snow, and soldered them to the feedpoint, spacing each from the 80m wires with a couple of old toothbrushes through which I had made a couple of holes with my soldering iron tip (the plastic wipes off, fortunately, tho most easily when the iron is still hot). I wired them in place with short pieces of the 14 ga solid wire, then pulled the beast up in the air.

When it was in place I saw that the 40m wires had twisted around the 80m wires, but I went in and checked it anyway. The 80m performance was considerably worse, and the 40m performance unacceptable, so I went back out and lowered the antenna, pulling on the feedline and one rope end simultaneously each time I had to get it up or down so it would clear the house. I straightened out the 40m wire and let it droop down on both sides a few feet so it would be less likely to tangle. Then tested again. It took a few tries, but finally it was back up above the house and only one 40m wire was tangled in the 80m wire, and only for a few feet at the very end. Now the tuning looked good on both 80 and 40m, and quite usable on 15m as well.

Then I went back at the HF9v, for which I had also created a spreadsheet with SWR curve-charts. I tuned and tweaked and cussed and tuned and tweaked until well past dark, the day's off-and-on blizzards continuing except for an hour or so around sundown when the wind completely stopped (what a relief - I had been frozen most of the day). I moved a clamp on a coil, reaching up at arms length, and of course dropped a screw into the grass and snow below ... without a big magnet I knew I would not find it, and it had been a bit corroded anyway, so off I went to the hardware store for some more stainless stuff.

The guys at the hardware grinned when they saw me coming, probably wondering what power tool-enhanced home disaster I had created this time, but I got what I needed and dashed back home. I put a plastic bag on the ground at the base of the antenna this time, and managed to reassemble the clamp by moonlight, but the tuning was worse than before. Keep in mind that it takes a long time to test 9 bands and record the SWR etc. I decided to give up for the night, and was still chilled to the core when I went to sleep hours later. Tomorrow I would try again - I had had enough experience now with the HF9v that I thought I would be able to get it adjusted correctly .. eventually.