I am reminded of something that happened to a local AM radio station about
30 years ago. Their transmitter site was unattended and prone to vandalism.
Somebody managed to cut the guy wires on their 125 meter tower, and it came
down during the night. They had a part-time engineer who was a radio tech at
the local airport. In the wee hours of the morning, he managed to con a
weather balloon ("Gee, I thought they were bigger!) from the weather service
office at the airport. I'm not sure what gas was used for inflation, but I
believe it was helium.
His problem then was that he didn't have enough wire. So he woke up the
owner of a local electronic parts shop, met him there, and purchased a reel
of 12 gauge enamelled wire. Back at the transmitter site, he quickly found
out that a small weather balloon will not lift 125 meters of 12 ga wire! So
he scrounged around and found some 4-conductor telephone cable, and got the
antenna up in the air. Sort of. Let's just say that there was a strong
horizontal component to the field. I stopped by in the early afternoon to
see if I could offer any help. The wind had picked up, and the balloon kept
hitting the tops of the trees at the edge of the field. I went inside the
transmitter shack, and almost got seasick watching the plate current on the
1 kw AM rig. The engineer had been quite busy resetting the overload circuit
all day long.
As I recall, the balloon lost all lift by late afternoon, and he gave up. As
the tower was easily available unpainted Rohn 45, they had something up in
the air within a couple of days.
So the suggestion of using #22 wire may be right on target.
John Andrews, W1TAG
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