Moving my G5RV ?

[KD8NIV]

Good morning, I'm going to try and move my G5RV in a few days, so the center will be around 60', problem will be how to hang the ladder line/coax part that comes together up to keep the tention off this point...

Not sure what to do for a choke, but there will be some weight on the area the coax and ladder line meets right there, and since I have LMR 400 coax on my dipole, concern about the weight at this point pulling the PL connector off the cable.....how do you guys keep this from happening ?....

Looking at going up around 60' or so at the center, and the ladderline/coax part will be about 30 some feet off the ground...

 

[prcguy]

I've always made my own G5RV/ZS6BKW antennas, so I don't know how fragile the commercial ones are made. At the minimum I use 14ga copper clad steel wire and 16 or 14ga ladder line. The dipole wires go to a strong center insulator along with the ladder line connections. My ladder line to coax connector end has two layers of thick, hot glue type heat shrink over the ladder line and coax connector as a strain relief.

In one current installation for a remote control radio north of Boston, I have a ZS6BKW 25ft up in some trees with one end tied to a tree and the other end has a pulley in the tree and the guy rope for the antenna goes through the pulley and down to 90lb concrete weight a few feet off the ground. This allows the trees to sway, keeps constant tension on the dipole and the also keeps tension on the horizontal run of ladder line and coax to the house under a constant tension.

I have a guy rope attached to the ladder line just before the coax connection where I tightly taped the rope starting at the coax connector up the ladder line towards the antenna for about 18", looped the rope around to the other side of the ladder line and tapped it tightly all the way back to the connector. This provides a strain relief for the ladder line and spreads it out over a large area and takes all the strain off the coax connection.

I also had a large choke balun at the ladder line to coax junction and in this case I had a separate guy rope that attached to the ladder line and coax either side of the balun with the taping method above so the balun would gently hang under its own weight under the guy rope spanning above it.

My original antenna put up at this location many years ago with no pulley got ripped to shreds in a hurricane, but many of the trees were also knocked down. The current setup has lived through many storms with no problems so far.

I also had various G5RVs, ZS6BKW, 40m double bazooka, T2FD and a few others at my office set up between two 30ft light poles about 200ft apart. I used the same kind of strain relief as above for the ladder line and coax connector junctions and had pulleys at the top of each pole and cleats near the ground to wrap up the guy ropes. I could hang my body weight from one of the guy ropes coming down from the pulley to the point of the light poles bending inward toward each other and could never damage the antennas or feedlines doing this.
prcguy

Good morning, I'm going to try and move my G5RV in a few days, so the center will be around 60', problem will be how to hang the ladder line/coax part that comes together up to keep the tention off this point...

Not sure what to do for a choke, but there will be some weight on the area the coax and ladder line meets right there, and since I have LMR 400 coax on my dipole, concern about the weight at this point pulling the PL connector off the cable.....how do you guys keep this from happening ?....

Looking at going up around 60' or so at the center, and the ladderline/coax part will be about 30 some feet off the ground...

 

[toastycookies]

Not sure what to do for a choke, but there will be some weight on the area the coax and ladder line meets right there, and since I have LMR 400 coax on my dipole, concern about the weight at this point pulling the PL connector off the cable.....how do you guys keep this from happening ?....

Use dual pulleys on either side. one channel for the end, one channel for the middle.

 

[KD8NIV]

We moved my G5RV today, and now the center is close to 65' high, and the bottom of the ladder line is 33-35'' off the ground....the place the ladderline/coax meets at, went above the connector on the LL/coax about 2ft, and taped the LL/coax together, and used a piece of styrofoam over the LL and put coax inside it too, and taped it all up, so it don't allow any stress on the spot the LL and coax meets at,....and the coax, lays against the tree to the ground......also put a couple twists in the LL as it comes down the tree, maybe the wind won't bother it too much....

The upper leg, is about the same height as the center connector is, as it goes across the property to the wooded area on the other side.....but the lower end the leg, need to be raised up, it's about 15' off the ground .....also on this end, I loose just about all my height, because the ground levels out......will raise this up in a few days and get it close to the height as we can....still have a few tall tree's down here, but not as high as the tall pine tree the center connector is in......this dipole, is still on a mountain side here, but we did get it all moved, just have to fine tune it a little......haven't got to try it up much yet, will give it a few days...