I like the EDZ also. In fact they work very well as a sloper also. While mine are obviously higher, any real height on one end and as much height as you can get on the other is a good choice. Mine are in 90 degree quadrature and also 352 feet long center fed. Take a tour of the QTH on California Hammin'.
Mel, K6KBE On Wednesday, June 25, 2014 1:15 PM, Kevin <kev...@coho.net> wrote: Hi Richard, While I do not have experience with pine trees (they don't grow here in Oregon) I do have many years of experience with coniferous trees and antennas. Don't lay your wire across the tops of them as suggested you will only be frustrated by how little time they will spend in the air. You may get one month but that would be luck. Any breeze coming along will knock them down. My trees ( a mix of hemlock, Douglas fir, and western redcedar) block propagation when they are wet but mostly at higher frequencies. 70 centimeters is the most highly effected. On a typically foggy day you need to find a hole in the trees for a hand held to work at all. However, at the lower frequencies of HF you won't experience much attenuation at all. Since you're running a wire at right angles to the trunks there won't be much effect from them. I have one inverted V and one flat top doublet. 80 meters is limited to upper California to lower British Columbia and then out into the desert areas of the northern Great Basin. The biggest problem to propagation is having the Pacific Ocean out to my west. There are not a lot of 80 meter operators there. Another problem with coniferous trees is snow loading. This is how I lose my antennas. After our typically wet snow falls the limbs can lower by as much as forty feet. The normal failure mode is for the antenna lines to part from their central connection when the drooping limbs capture the wires and pull them loose. I then use my F-250 to pull down the lines holding up the remaining bits of the antenna and rebuild it. I need to use the truck since the lines are quickly attached to the trees by growth or from pitch. Limbs falling can also be a problem but this only happens during the larger storms. Get your support lines as close as you can to the trunk of the tree; any further out and the trees will shed the lines quickly letting you practice putting them back up again. By the way, fir trees don't become mature until they are around 300 years old. By then they are normally one hundred feet tall if they have not been pruned by storms. I have a few of these older trees around my property but most of them are new growth of less than 60 years of age. While my normal noise floor is S1 it drops even further when there is a foot of snow on the trees. But then I am also losing a fair amount of signal to all that supported water. My antennas use insulated wire which helps them from shorting to ground but when the antennas carry an inch or two of snow the signal is attenuated. The first breeze coming by normally clears the antenna wires and my received signal strength jumps by an S unit or two. Good luck, Kevin. KD5ONS On 6/25/2014 11:12 AM, Rstafford12 wrote: > I realize this is another somewhat not on topic post, but it is in regards to > my KX1 and KX3. I have a mature pine forest; 60 -70 foot trees. How > compromised would an EDZ be hung 45 feet up about four rows of trees in from > the perimeter? No branches or needles inside the forest until 50 feet up. > Richard KD0NPM > ______________________________________________________________ > Elecraft mailing list > Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft > Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm > Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net > > This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net > Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html > Message delivered to kev...@coho.net > ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html Message delivered to farrerfo...@yahoo.com ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html Message delivered to arch...@mail-archive.com
