On Aug 30, 12:19*am, Roy Lewallen wrote:
For many years I've used a slingshot to put up antennas on Field Day.
Even after just a day or two, they can sometimes be hard to get down,
the twine having dug its way into the tree and gotten gummed up with
sap. After those experiences, I've never been willing to put an antenna
up permanently or semi-permanently by just getting a rope over a branch
-- I've climbed and put a pulley part way up which I've had to replace
every few years as the tree grows out over it.

Of course, larger diameter rope wouldn't cut into the tree as badly as
the heavy twine I use for FD. But I'm sure it would still cut in and get
stuck after even a fairly short period of chafing under tension, and the
tree would grow over and around the rope before long. The result would
be a rope permanently stuck in the tree.

So I'm curious how this ends up working for you. My trees are nearly all
confers -- Douglas Fir, hemlock, sequoia. Are yours hardwood? Are other
folks able to get away with this?

Roy Lewallen, W7EL

Roy -
Let me tell you, I could never be good enough with a slingshot to
get a line over a 120 foot tree! But the tennis ball cannon has
served quite nicely for sending a line over any tree I could find. We
could probably agree to disagree on this - you're good with the
slingshot, and I'm an ace with the cannon.

I find that even in non-conifer trees that it's likely for a 1/4" or
3/16" rope to get stuck after a year or more. If there's a single
crotch with a tight angle in it (e.g. 90 degrees) as opposed to a
number of turns of smaller angles it seems more likely to get stuck. I
don't see how twine could hold up for nearly that long. My
installations are Dacron/polyester rope with pulleys and a
counterweight; the counterweight is IMHO absolutely essential to
having the antenna survive a thunderstorm.

There are also fast-growing pine trees in my neighborhood but they
are "new" and not the giant old-growth trees. In the February
snowstorms (4 feet of snow! Snowpocalypse!) a *lot* of the medium
height pines came down under the weight of the 4 foot snowfall. Non-
evergreen trees also came down but not nearly at the rate that the
conifers did.

Tim N3QE