Dipole is Down

I had an 80/40m trap dipole  up in Floyd County since 2011. It was initially about 3m high, and I moved it up to  to 10m in height in the fall of 2012. It had done very well at that height, being an extremely effective antenna on 40m, and not terribly bad on 80m, either.

Well, all good things have to come to an end. During a wind storm in the last month, a very large branch, weighing a few hundred pounds, broke off a tree and fell through the dipole.

Amazingly, all it did was unravel the ends at the insulator. The wire is unharmed. However, I will need to cast a line over the tree again in order to loft it back up. Unfortunately, this late in the spring, that becomes very difficult, since the leaves are all on the trees. It's so much easier for those leaves to tangle or snare fishing line.

I'm still working on a design for an 80/40/30/20m trap dipole. Perhaps that will go up next.