{"id":8289,"date":"2011-10-22T09:03:00","date_gmt":"2011-10-22T15:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ishmaels.net\/blog\/?p=8289"},"modified":"2011-10-22T09:03:00","modified_gmt":"2011-10-22T15:03:00","slug":"notes-for-my-carolina-windom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ishmaels.net\/blog\/2011\/10\/22\/notes-for-my-carolina-windom\/","title":{"rendered":"Notes for my Carolina Windom\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just as I am getting ready to put my windom up the article below came from Amateur Radio.com<\/a>.  I may still have to put up a pulley and weight<\/strong> as I am raising a full 160 meter<\/strong> windom and the longer leg will be 182 feet long.  That will be a lot<\/strong> of wire<\/strong> hung in the air.   This is the one<\/strong> I am putting up\u2026<\/strong> <\/p>\n

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Home<\/a><\/strong> <\/p>\n

\"\" A Shock-Absorber for a Wire Antenna<\/a><\/h4>\n<\/p>\n

\"\" 21 October<\/strong> 2011 | by Todd N\u00d8IP<\/a>  |  Share<\/a> |   |  Leave a Comment<\/a> (1<\/a>) <\/p>\n

Of the three support<\/strong>-points for my wire<\/strong> antenna, one<\/strong> of them has caused me some concern. The end of the longest span of my New Carolina Windom is attached to a rigid, unguyed 12 foot<\/strong> steel mast by a very short length of rope \u2014 not nearly long enough to stretch and absorb the shock that a wind-whipped wire<\/strong> might induce in a good storm. Furthermore, this 12 foot<\/strong> mast is set<\/strong> in a small 3? tripod without any reinforcement below the roof<\/strong>. Obviously this isn\u2019t good enough for a heavy load, but I\u2019m hoping it will suffice to support<\/strong> one<\/strong> end of a 42? wire<\/strong>. As a precaution, I\u2019ve built a shock-absorber into the system<\/strong>: <\/p>\n

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This is a spring that I bought at the local hardware store. I didn\u2019t do any calculations to select the thing. I just went through the drawers and handled all the likely-looking springs they had. This one<\/strong> felt about right when I pulled on it. I tied it into the 3\/32? braided dacron\/nylon rope with a loop long enough to match the length of the spring when fully extended. The electrical tape is to prevent chafing for as long as it stays on. <\/p>\n

The spring is strong enough that on a calm day it doesn<\/strong>\u2019t stretch at all, but it still has plenty of give if the wire<\/strong> gets to whipping around. Will it help this antenna-system<\/strong> weather the storms we get out here in western Minnesota? Time will tell! <\/p>\n

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Todd Mitchell, N\u00d8IP<\/a>, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com<\/strong> and writes from Minnesota, USA<\/strong>. He can be contacted at lamentans@gmail.com<\/a>.<\/i><\/em> <\/p>\n

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