Category: Amateur Radio

Loss of Wireman 553 windowed ladder line at MF/HF discussed the matched line loss of a windowed ladder line with 19 strand CCS conductors.

Above, the loss curves from the article

You might look at this and ask “does it matter”, if 10m of this line is used in a G5RV, 0.0075dB/m at 3.6MHz gives 0.075dB loss… that is just 2%, so what.

That ‘back of the envelope’ calculation is incorrect, that feed line section operates with standing waves and the loss under standing waves must be evaluated. If we took the feed point impedance of the popular G5RV to be around 10-j340Ω at 3.6MHz, the expected loss in 10m of Wireman 553 with that load based on the above MLL is 3.3dB or 53%. By way of contrast, my own G5RV uses 10m of home made open wire line using 2mm copper wires spaced 50mm and the loss is 0.9dB, 2.4dB less. Continue reading Loss of Wireman 553 windowed ladder line at MF/HF – does it matter

Over a long time I have voiced concern at the likely performance at MF / low HF of the very popular windowed ladder lines that use CCS conductors.

A very popular form of commercial ladder line is that using #18 wire, comprised of 19 strands of #31 30% IACS conductivity copper clad steel. The copper cladding on such a conductor is about 14µm in thickness.

This article reports and analyses measurements of a length of Wireman 553 windowed ladder line. Continue reading Loss of Wireman 553 windowed ladder line at MF/HF