Well - before I get lost trying to make an individual reply again I guess I
will just reply to the list.
Jason, I understand the ladder lock will work quite well, although I have never
used one myself. I would NOT attach your dipole's feedpoint directly to your
tower - unless you have a wooden tower. Being cheap, I use the homebrew
standoffs at the farm, where one run of the stuff is over 300 feet without
other supports. That setup has been up since 1996, without problems.
I do have a pair of 100,000 ohm wirewound resistors, one from each side of the
ladder line to ground, to drain static electricity off. Array Solutions has an
RF choke to do much the same thing - or you can wind six to eight inches of
small diameter insulated wire on PVC and build your own. I used the spark plug
lightning arrestor back in the 1950's and was never satisfied with performance.
I do use a purpose built dual gas tube arrestor at the farm.
I don't use ladder line here, since getting even coax in and out is a pain.
Basicly, I use a 6 foot section of salvaged galvanized water pipe with a pulley
at the end to stand my dipole's center support to the tower.
The pipe is U-bolted (galvanized U bolts) to two of the tower legs just under
the rotor shelf; and the pulley stands almost four feet off the tower. The
haul line (parachute cord from the Army Navy Surplus store) from the pulley
goes to a foot long section of 3/4 inch PVC for extra insulation, with a
locking carabiner between the PVC and the Alpha Delta's center insulator. This
setup served for about 8 years without noticable deterioration, until I went
nuts and tried to shoehorn a shortened 160 dipole into the same space. After a
couple of years I went back to the DX-CC.
The original haul line is a little stiffer than when I put it up in 1990 - but
it's still plenty strong. From experience, everything should be galvanized
unless you want to go to a lot of trouble separating the non-galvanized parts.
Everything else looks quite well, even after two hurricanes and a line squall
that tore down most of the trees in the area.
Hope that helps and
73 Pete Allen AC5E
--
Never squat with your spurs on
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