Given that several weeks have passed since my last post, I just wanted to provide an update about the effectiveness of this design.
I accidentally chanced upon the ARRL SSB DX contest last month and decided to play. By Saturday night I had about 100 contacts, followed by another dozen or so during about an hour of participation on Sunday afternoon. That provided a plethora of contacts from South America, the Caribbean, and Europe on various bands, with 80 and 40m limited to North American contacts. Outside of that contest I've added some additional countries and provinces, so that the antenna's connected me to about forty countries, a dozen US states plus a few territories, and a few Canadian provinces.
This past week I finally had an opportunity to raise the far end of the wire up by about another ten feet so that it's at about 25-27 feet at its highest. While the band conditions during the past week have been up and down, making a direct comparison difficult, a few people on the nets that I frequent noted that the change resulted in the highest signal reports to date on 80 and 40m. I think that a few local 80m stations might have dropped off slightly as the angle of radiation has changed, but the overall trend suggests an improvement. And during an ARES/Red Cross meeting this past weekend a few people who've talked to me on the HF bands commented favourably about the antenna's effectiveness.
The wire is sensitive towards wet weather, especially when the coax lies on the ground, and I'd like it to tune across a wider portion of the 10 and 160m band, but it's otherwise working awfully well as is. I may raise one corner higher, test it with an analyzer and perhaps eventually add a 600W amplifier, so the story's hardly over, but I wanted to reiterate that it's been working well and keeping me happy.
