On 5/31/2013 4:37 AM, Cqtestk4xs@aol.com wrote:
You'll find many guys like me who are contesters, who don't have an endless
supply of cash and scrounge up the hardline and connectors for pennies on
a dollar. Not many go out and spend $14/ft for hardline.
EXACTLY! The runs to my primary tower are 350 ft, and I'm using 7/8-in
Heliax that I've scrounged from a variety of sources. Average cost
$1/ft. One of those runs is to a SteppIR that I use a lot 6M, another is
a long boom 2M Yagi. For shorter runs to monobanders, I'm using 1/2-in
CATV coax that I scrounged somewhere else. On the other hand, the 250 ft
runs to my 160M antennas are RG8 with a #10 solid copper center and a
beefy copper braid, which has pretty low loss on 160M. In all cases,
I've done the math. You can bet that the big hard line matters for those
runs where I'm using it, and also that it would be a waste on those 160M
antennas.
For the last year or so, I've been using SimSmith to model feedlines and
compute losses based on measured antenna data. SimSmith is new Smith
Chart software by AE6TY that urns in Java. It's FREE! Google to find it.
73, Jim K9YC
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