Steve Ratzlaff described coupling his long wires to his '59 using a high quality ferrite rod and medium count litz. In that my ferrite tuner does not have return ground clip (yet), I decided to follow Steve's lead and use one of the 4" x .5" OD Bytemark rods I describe in the article at www.dxer.ca It is made in similar fashion, but with fewer turns, 60 turns of 165/46 litz over cardboard stock to space the wire from the rod slightly. Connecting the ends of the coil to the antenna switch, I tuned the radio to my old standby, 1620 WDHP, Virgin Islands, over 1400 miles away. My ewe fires dead aim at the Caribbean. Away from the coil, the Gulf Breezes FL station 1620 was audible and clear with no other station underneath. When I moved the pocket weasel to the coil, Gulf Breezes disappeared and in roared WDHP. I disconnected the ground end of the coil and WDHP still came in, but not nearly as well. It was still coupling, however. At the antenna end, my ewe is transformed to a 9:1 transformer to twin feed military commo wire to the shack. The wire terminates to an 8 turns bifilar transformer then to my switch. There is no need to "tune" the ferrite coupler. It does a great job of coupling the '59 to the ewe. I'd measure the inductance, but the battery to my L/C meter is dead and I'm not going to rob a smoke detector of a battery. Again. 73, Gil _______________________________________________ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca
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