My Long Wire Antenna Is Up!

A Very Special Thanks to Nick KF2P

Back in the early 90's Nick and I worked at the same government site. There was a Ham Shack on site with old HF tube gear like Swan, Collin, Kenwood and Yaesu. We were both new hams back then and threw up any kind of temporary wire antenna we could to get on the air during our lunch hour. 

A couple of the old radios still worked at reduced power so we'd go crazy like a couple of true LIDS working DX with CW. I can only imagine what the operators at the other end thought of us as we made a zillion mistakes.  

Fast forward 30 something years:

A week ago we were able to get one end of the antenna up in the air. Doing the first leg of the antenna was more difficult than we expected. Other than the dead of winter with snow flying, this is the worst time of the year to install a wire antenna that depends on tree branches. The huge oak trees here are covered with leaves and it's difficult to see where the fishing line and sinker ends up in the tangled mess.

To top it off, yesterday was over 90 degrees. You'd think to old guys would be smart enough to stay out of the heat and humidity. We were LIDS back then and I guess in some ways we haven't learned much!

Thanks to Nick who has the installation worked out in his head, we managed to complete the installation. The wire is up around 40 feet and feeds directly into the shack with ladder line. The long wire is connected to one leg of the ladder line while the other leg goes to an 8 foot ground rod. Inside the shack the ladder line goes to a terminator that switches over to BNC at the LDG IT-100 tuner.

Getting 30 over signals again reminds me of the days when I had a 102 foot center fed dipole up about 40 feet which was fed with ladder line directly to an old DENTRON 1KW tuner. Back in those days, when the bands were hot it was nothing to work Asia, Oceania, Africa and Europe. Although I never received the QSL card, I did work Antarctica more than once. 

Again thank you Nick for your many years of friendship and expertise! 

72 de @ke2yk