The Finished Loop Antenna

I finally got the poles purchased and set and now have my loop (skywire) antenna up in the air.  Here's a picture.

The feedline is on the steel tower over by the house and there are four other poles arranged in a pentagram.  The poles are about 117' apart and the wire is 536 feet long.  The results are spectacular!  The bad news is that the loop out-performs my three element beam on 20, 15, and 10 meters.

I do need to experiment with the feedline length.  Right now I'm at about 70 feet and it probably should be increased to 130 feet.  Anyway, if you have the room, I would strongly recommend a skywire or loop antenna.

If I have any more breakthroughs, I'll let you know.

Poles in the Air

The other day, I wrote about my difficulties in obtaining utility poles.  Well, as usual,  that problem was easy to solve with money!

Gary, the local utility contractor, bought four poles for me from a mill in Arkansas.  They were delivered early last week by a hauler out of Little Rock.  He had a load of poles going to Oilton and put on my four as well.  The driver used some sort of articulated crane to unload the poles in just a matter of minutes!

I needed to get the poles ready for use by mounting a swivel and pulley at the top of each one and running a dacron line to the ground.  I told Gary I would give him a call when I was ready to stand them up.  At this point I should mention that, although the poles were supposed to be 50 feet long, they didn't look very long laying there.  I got a tape measure out and checked them and they were right on.

By Thursday, I had obtained all the "stuff" I needed to rig the poles and it only took a couple of hours to finish them up.  I called Gary and he told me he would be out the next day (yesterday) to set them.  So, about 10 a.m. yesterday, he showed up with the digger derrick and proceeded to stand them up.  As with any job, having the right tools makes it so much easier!  In less than three hours he had the poles all installed.

It is absolutely amazing how tall those poles became after they were set!  The same ones that I thought were too short are now giants.  Today, I'm going to get the loop antenna up on these new poles and see how it works.  I'll let you know when I find out.

In Search of a Telephone Pole

I think these might more appropriately be called utility poles but around here we call them telephone poles, regardless of what they have strung on them.

A couple of years ago, I put up a loop antenna comprised of 536' of wire suspended about 20-25 feet off the ground.  See my blog of December 3, 2011, if you are really interested in the details.  At the time, I suspended the loop, or "skywire" antenna, with four poles made of chain link fencing top rail and my tower, making a total of five supports.

The skywire antenna has worked better than I ever could have imagined and I've decided that I want to elevate it some to allow it to function even better.  I've tentatively settled on 45' as a goal.  The top rails are "maxxed out" at 25' so there is no way to use them at increased heights (without a bunch of guy wires).  Another alternative would be four additional towers; this would be totally cost prohibitive!  At any rate, I have settled on utility poles as the most viable option here.

I'm now finding out that you can't just go down to the utility pole store and buy four poles!  For one thing, they are very difficult to haul (you have to have a very long trailer) and install (a digger derrick truck is a must for this task).  My first try was our local electrical co-op; they weren't too interested since this project isn't going to help them sell more electricity.  The next try was a couple of electrical contractors who build transmission lines for the co-ops.  They are used to big jobs and didn't want to mess with a ham radio operator who only wants four poles!

My last chance to get these poles and have them set is a local electrician who does quite a bit of commercial construction.  If he won't do it, I may have to find a new plan!  I'll let you know.

160 Meter (Skywire) Antenna

After listening to several people who had loops, I decided that I had to have one. I got it up about a year ago and it has been a wonderful antenna, so good that I took down my modified G5RV.

A short description: it is 536 feet long and is about 25 feet high.It has five sides and one of the corners is attached to my tower. The feedline from it to the house is 450 ohm ladderline, which is very similar to the old television flat wire we used when I was a kid. It runs through a 4:1 balun which is mounted just outside the window and then uses coax to connect to the tuner.

There is only one problem with this antenna: it is very difficult to tune on 160 meters. It works great on 80, 40, and 20 but the band it is designed to work best on is a flop! I'm not smart enough to figure out what is going on but I'm gonna start changing parts till it gets better. This is also the way I work on cars, by the way.

Here is a copy of the antenna performance from 0.5 to 8.0 mHz. You can see that there are "lobes" at about 3.8, 5.5, and 7.2mHz, but none in the 1.8 to 2.0mHz range (160 meters). I gotta learn more about antenna design and performance.