Shawn has a very different installation of his feedline to the StepIR Antenna. The installation is mostly about noise reduction. Shawn does a lot of low power, QRP, work on HF. Hi Jim Heath W6LG
Very interesting thoughts on the feedline. I have certainly found myself in the past that ditching a run of cheapo RG58 and replacing it with a better-shielded cable cut noise, and using a toroidal choke at the rig end of the feeder cut noise some more. The war against QRM is a large number of small-scale battles - not that anyone could call that pipeline of a feeder small-scale!
I agree 100% with the larger feedline having virtually almost no loss, and is a MUCH quieter feedline. I have used everything from LMR 400, LMR600 to LDF-50A to this Andrews 7/8" shown in the picture. The moral of the story is buy the best coax to you if weak signals are important to you. 99% of amateur radio operators do not want to spend money on something like this, they rather buy a big amp! But if your into less noise, this is the ONLY way to go.
Fascinating to say the least. The offset routing of the feedline to the operating station separate and isolated grounding to the tower is worth the entire video. Outstanding idea. can't wait to put up my tower and try that with some LDF-50.
While this may well improve station operation in various ways, surge currents from near (induction) or direct (tower) lightning events will couple just fine to the parallel tower/feedline combo (robust inductive coupling and yes capacitance as well) and flow this directly into the home creating mayhem through the equipment ground. This often doesn't end well. ZS1SBW has much to be proud of in his radio journey. There are different reasons we ground things and sometimes the approaches create conflict. This may be an example. He did something because of a perceived operational benefit, but doing so compromised his lightning protection. Maybe he lives where lightning is extremely rare. If so the reward may outweigh the risk(s). Allowing any conductor into the premises without an external path to ground for high energy events probably negates property insurance claims... in the US at least. I believe the most recent versions of NEC have much to say about this topic. Implement at your peril and financial risk.
I am thinking that this might be the kind of coax Shawn mentioned in the interview. Per the data sheet, the screening effectiveness is said to be <= 120dB. Working to eliminate sources of noise is another interesting problem domain in our hobby.
