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Reviews For: W7FG 600-Ohm Open Wire Feeders

Category: Feedlines (coax, ladder-line, etc.)

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Review Summary For : W7FG 600-Ohm Open Wire Feeders
Reviews: 37MSRP: 0.58 (aprox. per foot)
Description:
Real Open Wire Feeders for Ultimate in Low Loss!
Product is in production
More Info: http://www.trueladderline.com
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
00375
W3PH Rating: 2004-10-12
Best ladder-line I've seen! Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
This is good stuff - I've always been a ladder-line devotee (can't be bothered tuning wires to resonance for coax), so I have 4 1/2 decades of open-wire 'experience' - what I like about this line:

1. unlike plastic window-type ladder line, it doesn't get weird when wet. I live on a lake, and humidity/rain/snow are big environmental factors, and the window-type stuff gets very lossy when wet (clue: if you have to retune when the line is wet, what's going on isn't likely to be good :-) ). This line doesn't notice the moisture.

2. The spreaders are suprisingly strong, and they don't come off the wires easily. I changed my mind about an antenna I put up last weekend and had to pull the thing down, and the ladder line got stuck in the tree. I gave up trying to thread it out and just yanked, and not one of the spreaders came loose.

3. The wire used is heavy enough to be strong, but light enough (16 gauge) to be flexible, so it's easy to work with.

I bought a 300' reel so I'd have enough for the next few years' antenna experiments.
K6VHP Rating: 2003-07-30
Excellent, great value Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I finally got around to replacing my old HF antenna system, which was a 135' dipole fed with 450 ohm plastic windowed balanced line. The old plastic feedline was in bad shape, as it made "crackly" noises when bent, and I noted that it had been absorbing water during the wet season, causing me to retune often. The old dipole wire was 14 gauge stranded bare copper, and it was in *bad* shape, corrode, oxidized, and had many strands broken & sticking out all over. YUCK!
I replaced the whole thing with the W7FG ladder line and a new 12 gauge insulated full-wave loop cut to 80 meters. The ladder line is supported up the side of my tower by 3' ABS side arms u-bolted to the tower. The feedline is excellent! I don't know how they sell it so cheap, as it looks like a lot of labor to assemble. My 100' chunk of it was $40 plus shipping. I am most pleased with it, and am very happy with the performance of the new loop. This system should last a long time. I highly recommend the W7FG ladder line! "Real Feedline for Real Hams!" 73--- NA6DF
K5UJ Rating: 2003-06-24
Good quality; reasonable price Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
This review is one part of a series of reviews I intend to write, each covering an element in an antenna system I've put together. The other elements I plan to cover are the Bliss Z Matchmaster balanced transmatch, and the MFJ 33 foot fiberglass telescoping poles. The antenna I am working with, which is fed by the open wire feed, Matchmaster, and held up by the MFJ poles, is the 20 - 80 meter 88 foot compromise dipole which is covered at length by W4RNL at http://www.cebik.com/88.html.

This review will confine itself to the W7FG open wire feedline only. I have no experience with the line of antennas which are sold along with the
feedline.

Conceptually and mechanically, open wire feed is not too complicated, and for this reason a lot of hams have chosen to homebrew their own feedlines
over the years. It's basically a matter of getting two matching lengths of wire, usually #14 or #16 stranded copper, tying them together at one end and anchoring the knot to a holder such as a fence post, pulling them taught so they are parallel to each other, and inserting nonmetal spacers at 12 to 18 inch intervals so the wires are roughly 3.5 inches apart, closer for lower
impedance. Sound's easy and straight forward doesn't it? Well, that's because I made it sound easy. As many hams have found, finding the right
spacer material in large enough quantites, and making the necessary number of spacers is harder than it sounds. If you have other things you need to do with your time, or are otherwise uninterested in the raw material hunt, the chore of cutting plastic pipe and cutting notches in it so the ends of each piece will hold wire, then for a cost that's a lot less than good coax, you can get a run of W7FG's 600 ohm open wire feed. (On the other hand, you won't get to brag to people that you made your own feedline, which sounds pretty impressive.)

I purchased a 200 foot roll even though at this point I'm only using about 40 feet of it. (I like to stash away supplies.) It arrived via USPS in a box about 30 inches high, by 18" wide and deep. This was my first experience with this
sort of feedline, having been a coax ham up until now. I had always heard of open wire but had ignored it as being too weird. When I pulled it out of the box, my first thought was that I'd purchased something that would never work, the wire equivalent of a box of rocks. The old feelings of doubt returned. But once the weather warmed up and I got serious about putting up the dipole, I got the feedline outside and unrolled enough of it to use. When I hooked one tied end over a fence picket and stretched it out about 50 feet with the other end fastened on a stake in the ground, I knew it would work. The line is made with multi-strand #16 copper wire in a soft black plastic shield so it's very easy to work with. The spreaders are sections of semi-soft black plastic pipe, roughly 1/2 inch diameter with notches cut in them to hold the wire. The notches are tight enough to snap the wire into and hold it, but not so tight that adjustments are hard to make. This means that it's easy to stretch the line out and move the spreaders around to where they are needed, or unclip them and re-attach them elsewhere so the two wires stay the same length and the spacing is equal. Another positive thing about the wire used is that cutting, splicing and soldering it is a piece of cake. And for open wire in general, banana plugs are a lot cheaper and easier to add than UHF and N connectors are on coax.

I positioned my transmatch in my basement so it sat just inside a small window. A short section of open wire feed runs over from it to the window
where it is soldered to two banana sockets which go through a pane made of plexiglass. The outside run plugs into the sockets and extends away at a right angle from my house for a few feet across my back yard, at which point
it makes a 90 degree turn to go over to a fiberglass pole holding up the feedpoint of the dipole. This makes for a short run of about 35 feet. I used pvc pipes, T sections and caps along with cable ties in various ways to
support the feedline so one side of it would bank down through the 90 degree turn, come back up over to the pole and go through another gradual vertical bend before going up. Each side is close to being the same length this way.
The spacers are easy to slide around and place where needed to insure the integrity of the feed.

Using this feedline (along with the transmatch), I am able to tune and load the dipole on any frequency on 17 through 80 meters. I still can't get over this type of feedline works as well as it does--it's kind of magical. After years of being aware of the theory behind its operation, it's nevertheless amazing to see it actually working. As far as I am concerned, open wire feed and a balanced transmatch are the way to go when using fixed symmetrical antennas (loops, dipoles etc.). The trick is routing it to your transmatch in a way that allows it to avoid metal in supports, and walls by a distance of at least 3 or 4 inches, and keeping it up off the ground. But because of its low loss over a wide range of frequencies and balanced nature, it is almost as if you are bringing the antenna feedpoint down to your transmatch. The results are very rewarding. I will be reviewing the Bliss Z Matchmaster tuner and the MFJ fiberglass poles once I have logged more time with them. I am grateful to Kirk Kleinschmidt. NT0Z, for his article in QST last year, A Balanced, Everyday Approach to All-Band Bliss, April 2002, pp. 47-50, which sparked my interest in balanced transmatches and open wire feedlines.
For more information see http://www.w7fg.com/ant.htm.
Rob Atkinson
K5UJ
K9FTB Rating: 2002-09-06
Excellent Value Time Owned: more than 12 months.
This was my first ladder line antenna. It's now up (center point) about 35'. The antenna and feedline are one continuous piece of wire. The ladder line separators are PVC pipe slotted to cause a "tactile" fit for each end of the spreader. I've had mine up for 16 mos. now - ice, wind, rain, and lots of snow. No issues. I was impressed with the $60 price tag for an 80M dipole with 100' of ladder line (much of which is in my basement right now).

Using a Ten Tec 238A tuner, the system works very well on 80-20. I've got RFI on15, 12, 10 meters. My shack ground leaves a lot to be desired. Have gotten good signal reports in Europe and from western US.

I'd recommend the antenna and the vendor. Great value for the price.
NC0B Rating: 2002-09-02
A fine product Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
I have two 40 meter colinears, one fed with the W7FG open wire line and one fed with the large window ladder line that is 1 inch across. They both handle 1200 watts with ease, but when it rains the W7FG product really shines since it is not necessary to retune the Johnson KW Matchbox. The other identical Johnson Matchbox has to be retuned as the SWR can easily jump to 2:1 once the ladder line gets wet. The 3.25 inch spacing makes the W7FG product somewhat harder to work with, and I switch to the "big twinlead" where the feedline enters the house. I am happy a fellow ham told me to try out the "real stuff".
K3DGR Rating: 2001-11-25
Super balanced all band antenna!! Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I should have put up one of these when I first got licensed back in '57.!! Purchased the 80-10m from Gary, put it up, center near the top of my 30ft tower, ends go into spruce trees, center comes directly down to my MFJ 949E tuner, Found settings on tuner for all the bands, 80 thru ten including WARC bands, no problem. Noise is greatly reduced as compared to my HyGain DX77 GP at the top of the tower. Wires and plastic insulatiors are very light and strong,. I use this antenna now as my standard of comparison. (Took down my Marconi wire to put this up).. would recommend this antenna to everyone.. Gary, this is terriffic antenna, way to go!!.. keep up the great work.. 73's Dave, aa3ej aa3ej@hotmail.com
FORMER_W5JI_JC Rating: 2000-12-15
Very Good Product Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
After using 450-ohm twinlead for several years on several antennas, it is a pleasure to use W7FG's ladder-line. Much better mechanically, stronger and more stable at my windy QTH.

I got the ladder-line as part of the 160-meter dipole they offer. Each side of the dipole and the side of the ladder-line which feeds it are one continous conductor....no splices to break!

The line is heavy enough to resist fluttering in the wind, came through a two day long sleet and ice storm the first week after installation and there was very little change in impedance when wet. I found much more variation in impedance with the 450-ohm twinlead I had used.

The dipole is supported in the center by a rope strung between two towers and is at 45 feet. The ends are supported by 40-foot Rohn masts. I was concerned, without any experience, with simply tying the center insulator (same plastic as spreaders) to the support rope. I thought it might bend or buckle from the stress, so I made a triangular yoke from polyester string to distribute the load. Works fine, but might not have been necessary. The plastic spreader/insulator material seems tougher than it looks.

I added 25 feet of W7FG's ladder-line to that supplied with the dipole to bring the end closer to my shack (poor planning on my part!). It is terminated 10 feet from my shack to a large knife switch which grounds the feedline when not in use. Parallel RG-8X with the shields tied together at the ends connect to the ladder-line at the knife switch and to my MFJ-986 tuner. This gets around the problems of bringing ladder-line through the shack wall. The shields are grounded to the tuner and left hanging at the knife switch. Antenna loads on all bands from 160 to 10 with no problem and no more than 1.2:1 SWR.

Like the product so much, I have purchased a second one which will end up as the main part of a 160-meter full wave horizontal loop.