Rune, Back in 1997 N6BV and I did some testing using "ladder line" (not the real 600 ohm stuff) and some 9:1 baluns on each end. We were looking at a site in YV where the beach was about 1000' from the hotel room. We tested the following: - loss in back to back baluns - loss in 100' of ladder line and baluns on each end
We tested 160 to 10m. We lost the data but I seem to remember the total loss on 80/160 with 1000' of line was negligible. Maybe in the 2 dB range on 10m with 1000' of ladder line. A few of us went to the YV location to run the IARU contest with the 1000' run of ladder line, using a single vertical on the beach. The system worked well, except when there was rain (varying SWR), or coconuts and palm fronds fell and broke the line. I just talked to N6BV and he said the ARRL Labratory recently did some careful measurements on matched-line losses for open-wire line for input to Dean's TLW program. There is a new executable that contains the algorithms for loss computation. Good luck, Kenny K2KW _________________ Topband Reflector Archives - http://www.contesting.com/_topband
