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neonhomer
Dearborn 5-2750
Premium Member
join:2004-01-27
Edgewater, FL

neonhomer

Premium Member

G5RV rebuild

Well, somehow my G5RV came down out of the tree, and one of the sides ended up getting cut.

Well, the ladder line segment, ladder lock, and the ladder line to coax interface is intact, and I have both end insulators. I want to rebuild the antenna...

The original wire used looks like either 14 or 16 ga bare copper wire. I'm wondering if I could use regular 14 ga insulated wire. The thing is I've read somewhere that forward velocity of the wire changes from being insulated, and than you have to shorten the wire by 4%.

Any help?
TheMG
Premium Member
join:2007-09-04
Canada
MikroTik RB450G
Cisco DPC3008
Cisco SPA112

TheMG

Premium Member

Quite often copper-clad steel is used for such antennas as it has a greater tensile strength than pure copper while not sacrificing on RF performance.

You could use pure copper but for long antennas there is a higher chance that it could break especially with high winds, which could very well be the reason yours broke if it was in fact pure copper that was used.
mr weather
Premium Member
join:2002-02-27
Mississauga, ON

mr weather

Premium Member

Pure copper also has a tendency to stretch.

neonhomer
Dearborn 5-2750
Premium Member
join:2004-01-27
Edgewater, FL

neonhomer

Premium Member

Well, to follow up on this thread...

I finally found my wire... and it wasn't 14 ga... it was 12 ga...

So me and my youngest spawn measured out two lengths of wire 52' long. Coiled them up, and then made the appropriate connections at the ends... using a "Western Union" splice at each end to secure the wire.

Put it up in the air, hooked everything back up, and went into the house to see if it would work. It did, but something seemed off.

So today, I went out and cut off about 10' of extra coax... this was after leaving enough for a 6 turn coil over a 2.5" PVC fitting. Placed the coil fairly close to the end of the coax.

Also soldered on a new connector to go on the coax, and then wrapped the whole thing in electrical tape. If this works out, then I will probably pull the tape and make a junction box to keep water out of my coax...

So far, I've been on 80m, and 40m, and it seems to work good. From my QTH here in Florida, I was able to hit South Carolina and Illinois... Not bad for a G5RV on it's second life...