Good, long-lasting open-wire line is neither hard to find or expensive.
I bought some no. 12 super-flexible wire from The Wireman (I'd provide a
link except that there is some stupid Cloudflare security thing that
won't let me access the site) and made spreaders out of black PVC
irrigation tubing. I made a jig to cut them to length, slit the ends and
inserted the wire. I made a few out of fiberglass tubing so there would
be solid ones where the line needed to be supported or turn a corner, etc.
It's been up 10 years so far with no problems, in the really vicious sun
we have here.
It works well. On 40m the SWR is over 90:1. The line is about 10m long,
and I've calculated a loss of less than 2 dB. 2 dB is not nothing, but
it's a good tradeoff to make a simple dipole only 10m long work on all 7
bands between 7 and 28 MHz. It even has a little extra gain on 17m and
above.
73,
Victor, 4X6GP
Rehovot, Israel
Formerly K2VCO
CWops no. 5
http://www.qsl.net/k2vco
On 20/07/2025 18:07, Wes via Elecraft wrote:
I never said that:
A second measurement was then made after wetting the line with
water to
simulate what might happen in a typical
outdoor application. Initially the water tended to bead up and run
off,
making it difficult to make meaningful
measurements. I believe that a typical line used outdoors would
quickly lose
its water shedding ability as it degrades
from sunlight and accumulates dust and other pollutants. To
simulate this, I
added a wetting agent to the
water to create a water film on the surface. The results of this are
probably worst case and not something that
would necessarily be encountered in a typical installation...
As an aside, my late friend, Danny, K6MHE, sent me a piece of window
line* that had been used on one of his dipoles suspended in the
redwood trees in Ft. Bragg, CA. It had moss growing on it. This would
not be a problem at my QTH in the Sonoran Desert, especially
considering that I would never use the stuff.
* I now prefer the term window line over ladder line, since the latter
is used for both true open wire and polyethylene insulated line.
On 7/19/2025 10:11 PM, Jack Brindle via Elecraft wrote:
There is no discussion about the effects of that wetting agent other
than a (questionable) general assumption that it had no effects.
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