Re-Ropes, insulators.
Hi Tom. You are correct, anything out side will suffer eventually, it will
either rust, corrode or in the case of the ropes discussed will degrade
and get brittle. They should be replaced every couple of years and do not
wait until they fall down or break. I replace my ropes and insulators
frequently even though they look good.
I have just spent today refurbishing my antenna system and have increased
the height to about 110 feet vertical, and added another inv L. I now have
3 inv L's in parallel.
each one is 110 ft vertical and 250 ft top section. These all feed to a
common point and connected to my loading inductor, I also replaced the
insulators, heavy duty marine type, as before and guaranteed no melt down.
I use a minimum of 2.5 mm insulated antenna wire and change this also
frequently to avoid a breakage.
The refurbished system was re-resonated and tested this afternoon and I
got a 599 report from GI3PDN, the effort was worth it.
73 de Mal/G3KEV
Tom Boucher wrote:
>From Tom, G3OLB
Be careful using polypropylene as guys for masts over a long period.
They degrade with ultra-violet exposure and become very weak. I lost a
55 ft mast some years ago in Farnborough due to the 6mm polyprop guys
breaking in a storm. Don't think my neighbour was too impressed about
having the mast, complete with dangly antennas, suspended horizontally
across his garden!
73, Tom
In message <[email protected]>, malcolmg3kev
<[email protected]> writes
>Also available at yacht suppliers are a variety of marine grade
>polypropylene strong ropes for guying towers and being non conductive
>are ideal.
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