I have a 240' delta loop suspended at three points about my QTH. I've been pondering adding another 47' but this is quite a challenge given the dimensions of my suburban lot. One thing I'm considering is to make good use of two trees located in a common area outside my property lines. Easily said, but I would not want to hang a 5 kg line ballast at either of these points because I can imagine a couple of neighborhood youths scaling a tree with one of them cutting a line causing the 5kg weight to crash down upon the tender skull of the other youth.
Legal matters notwithstanding, my question is whether I'm inviting certain mechanical failure if I fix the two endpoints outside my property lines and make use of only a single 5 kg ballast on the tree located within my property lines. The advantage of doing this is obvious, if any of the supporting lines outside my property are cut, the antenna falls onto my property and there is no possibility of injury to the purpetrators of the dastardly deed. As a possibly relevant aside, I don't use a typical insulator at each of the three suspension points. I use a 4" flat acrylic insulator with two 6" acrylic insulators attached to the end of the 4" insulator such that the resulting insulating apparatus appears to be a rather large 8" tuning rod. In my non-mechanical-engineering mind, I imagine that having the insulator arranged in such a fashion reduces the peak tension at each apex of the triangle and also allows the wire to move more freely through the insulator without binding at that point. I realize that this matter isn't related to any Elecraft product but there are so many sage OMs here that I feel that an answer will be quickly forthcoming and without controversy. -- Rick McClelland, AA5S Fort Collins, CO ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[email protected] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
