Ok, this may be the simplest question I will ever ask here so here goes.
During my research for OCF dipoles, I have read about some horror stories of
dipoles breaking or coming apart due to the stress of wind, weight and other
factors. Especially I've heard that the carolina windoms, with their extra
weight in the center caused by the matching unit, the isolator, and the length
of feedline can cause a big sag at the feedpoint. Several folks I've
corresponded with indicated that they attempted to "lift up" the feedpoint as
high as possible by putting more tension on the wires (legs) to hoist it
higher. This was for people that did not have a convenient center mounting
location like a tower or tree or house.
In thinking about this, it seems that these antennas have lots of phyiscal
stress on them from both gravity as well as tension on the ends of the wires in
the horizontal plane to try to counteract gavity.
My thought was this: By using one rope (dacron etc) to connect leg1 to a tree
and another rope to connect to leg2 to a tree (with pulleys and weights, of
course), this is putting lots of "horizontal" stress on these wires and the
center matching conductor/insulator thingy. This force is always trying to pull
apart the antenna.
Why not take one very long rope, thread it through the leg1 insulator, the
center insulator/matching unit and then the leg2 insulator? Surely the two ends
of the wires would have to be attached somewhat taught to the rope, but this
could be done with some black wire-ties along the length of each wire. Or tie
some knots in the rope somehow to hold the insulators in place.
My thought was, this would all but eliminate any horizonatal stress normally
put onto these wires and we would be left only with the stress of gravity
vertically. I would imagine too, that this would help keep the center up a big
better than nothing going through the center point.
Any thoughts? Could this work? What am I missing?
Eugene
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