HAMs

[skeets]

I have a question for the HAMs in here. Last week I was visiting my youngest daughter in Ca at the ranch.
The ranch next hill over, the old boy is/was a ham. Now the question is this. The power company had removed the power poles and lines from the roadway, and he is left with a duplex line between 2 poles, remember the power is gone so the over head is still there. There was a coax from his garage to the ground line and tied to the 2 other lines as well. It is hard to explain but he had all 3 leads tied together at one end, with the other ends open in free air. So it was like a 80 foot long line, I have no idea how he would tune it. I was wondering it the way the lines are coiled around the center conductor wouldn't they attenuate the signal. OR, would all 3 lines radiate the signal?
He wasnt home so I couldnt talk to him about it, and it has had me thinking about it driving home, for the last 3 days

 

[Gaspasser]

Pics would help. Not quite understanding your description. Coax itself can be used as an antenna with one conductor (the shield) usually grounded and the center conductor used as the exposed radiating element. It seems you may be describing a dipole.

 

[GreensvilleJay]

I 'see' it as all 4 wires, blk,red,wht,gnd are tied together so ONE massive conductor that's 80' long strung between the 2 poles. This IS the 'live 'antenna relative to Mother Earth ground.

The original 'gnd' from the drop is NOT connected to Mother Earth.

 

[Yooper]

I am thinking he has the antenna set for gain in the open direction for some reason

 

[skeets]

Yes I know it is kind of confusing to describe, and nothing is connected to mother earth. Though I wonder if all the leads were tied together at transmitter end, where in effect there would be 4 antennas, but that doesn't make any sense either.

So maybe the out side cables are acting as reflectors, I don't know. And the ARRL antenna lay outs, don't show anything like this, so I am stimmed. Thanks for the input guys

 

[Gaspasser]

Tying all radiating elements together would make it a random end fed long wire. Somewhere there would need to be a ground and a tuner.

 

[jaxs]

I heard about a guy with that exact setup and the way he said it worked was "when people see it they can't stop thinking about it". Come to find out he wasn't a ham at all,just a phycologist with a sense of humor.

 

[GreensvilleJay]

If it's wired the way I'm thinking, just look at it as being an 80' long section of 4 stranded wire.

 

[InTheWoods]

...There was a coax from his garage to the ground line and tied to the 2 other lines as well...

I design antennas professionally. I'm not 100% sure I understand the above.

The fact that there are 3 parallel conductors, twisted together, doesn't really matter much.

The simple but effective way I can see to use an abandoned 80' power line run would be to tie the wires together at one end, and then run a wire down the pole, and feed it as an 'inverted L', as shown below. At 80', it'll be long for 80 meters and short for 160m, but could probably be tuned pretty easily on these and most other bands.

An inverted L ought to have a decent ground system, unless you like RF backfeeding into the shack.

 

[skeets]

That makes sense to me. As for good grounding, since it is desert Im sure he had to be tied in to a water line or some other good medium. I really wish I could have talked to him just to understand his thinking, though Im bettin he could run a really big hammer and never heat it up