Well....if I were putting up three towers, they would be spaced far enough apart to hold a 160 meter dipole at 120' or so, with them aligned to run NS and EW.  Make one an 80 meter vertical dipole [insulated center section], the other a 160 meter full size 1/4 wave vertical, the other just a really tall one.

Then I'd load 'em with antennas, but one would be a SteppIR dream beam full sized....

"To dream, the impossible dream...."

Donate the mercury to the local college or high school science lab?

I had this dilemma a while back, and I went with the modern version 'cantenna', for the simple reason that the AL-80B can be tuned for several minutes without so much as warming the oil.

I'm not wild about the wet design, but I like the virtually unlimited power capability, and it really stays in line anyway, I don't need move it very often.

From my reading, it's a fifty foot limit in some zoning and seventy feet in the others.

Since a tower needs a building permit, they will tell you, but for planning and design, I'd say you know where to start.

Sure.  I have two of the three section models.

Way too heavy for ME to mess with regularly.

I use pipe clamps to hold them up as mone are usually temporary.

I use 14 ga galvanized wire for guying

The real pain with these is that you have to build the guys as you go up.  It pays to have helpers.

I mount mine so that I can work on it while standing on the roof.  Much nicer than a ladder.

Should work fine.  Of course higher would be better of course.

An amplifier makes you louder to them, a beam also makes them louder to you.

The beam also let's you null interfering stations.

My choice would be beam first.

I may get a chance to A/B an FT-2000 vs 5000 at the same QTH.  Should be interesting.  I've owned the 5000 for a year now, but it's in a different shack, 1000 miles distant.

In my CA QTH where the 2000 is located, the supposed lack of receiver performance is not obvious to me, but the noise level at that location is so high.  Here in CO, it's S-0 to S1 noise so it should be a better test.

I think if it was my money, I'd buy a 950 instead of a 2000 today, but the 5000 is really a great rig - I say that as an operator who loves to have all buttons and knobs for operating controls.  Once you set up a 5000 you practically can pitch the manual, everything is on the front.

I'm no longer current on required equipment for flight in IFR, but IIRC, the FAA prohibits 'shared' equipment for amateur use.

I believe the only exception to this is connecting thru your audio panel.

An all-band antenna is similar to a racecar/pickuptruck/limo/minivan/economy car....


If you must buy an antenna and get on the air NOW, go with a BTV, put down what radials you can and get on the air.  Then, for your NEXT antenna, buy an Antenna book and have at some book learning on how to better meet your needs in your available space.

Antenna farms in limited space tend to be really individual designs due to the wide variety of limitation imposed - for example - if you had supports or could put them up at the 'corners' a loop comes to mind - a full wavelength 80 meter loop is roughly a 66' square - it can be less than a 1:1 aspect ratio but the flatter the rectange the less effective...

So read a bit, look at your site and then start planning your 'improvements'.

Piece of PVC pipe?

Small section of hardwood?

any double ended insulator.

I always keeps a handful of insulators and center insulators on hand, never know when I'm going to want to toss up a new antenna.

Some years back I put a mobile in my Subaru - and did not want to drill holes for a mic holder.  Solution?  the dash has plastic 'walnut wood grain' - I installed a metal mic hanger on a small piece of plexiglass using nylon bolts, then used double stick tape to stick this to the dash location.  Been there some 6 years or so no problems.

I want to thank you guys for a really interesting answer to the question, I thought about it before I read the answer and was wrong. 

Not really a stupid question.  In theory, it's supposed to be from end to end, right to the end of the loops of wire thru the insulators.  BUT, that 468/f is just a rough guess, and you will end up changing that to tune the antenna.

By the way, once you get the antenna tuned, it's useful to measure your final length so that you can incorporate a measure of reality into that 468 number - you might find that 452 or 477 might be a more accurate number for YOUR QTH. 

The note about the overlapping wire if using insulated - that's called Linear Loading, when the insulated wire is just twisted and not electrically connected.  It makes using insulated wire a minor hassle since once you cut the extra insulated wire off, you change the tuning!

The theory is that by locating the tuner remotely at the antenna, the SWR on the feedline from the tuner [or coupler] is the lowest possible, therefore reducing the losses on that portion of line to the nominal 'matched' loss of that feedline.

Just pulling numbers out of the air for the purposes of illustration, say your coax has a loss at 10 MHz of 0.8 dB per 100 feet when matched, and a loss at say 10:1, of 5 dB per 100'

Your feedline is 150 feet.  A matched feedlines loss at that length would be 1.2 dB.  An un-matched feedlines loss would be 7.5 dB for the same length.  Pretty easy to see that your power losses of 6.3 dB makes a pretty good arguement for remote couplers.

Given this advantage, it's pretty easy to see the advantages of a remote coupler, alhough I think it's going to be a while before high-power handling remote couplers will be as commonplace as in-shack tuners.

Wow.  Ah, look at the breaking strength.  14 ga copperweld is really tough.  I use 14 ga hard drawn copper stranded and it's still strong enough for an 80 meter.

You need to handle it to avoid kinking - I think you can pull it between two clamped wood blocks and get some of the set out of it that way.

There is also stranded copperweld, 14 gauge - that might suit you better.