Wire and trees and me

[tkamiya]

What troubles me more than gaining height is avoiding all the branches.  Pull the other end of cord to raise the antenna and it gets caught at every branch.  Anyone have a solution for THAT?

[cdev]

These are all such great ideas. There is a lot to chew on here.

I better get on top of it, life is too short to put up with crappy antennas!

[djacobow]

What troubles me more than gaining height is avoiding all the branches.  Pull the other end of cord to raise the antenna and it gets caught at every branch.  Anyone have a solution for THAT?

Nothing brilliant here, but I've found that when I'm stuck going back a foot or two and then pulling quickly to get over the branch / snag sometimes help.

My normal approach is a rock on lightweight nylon over the branch first. I try to throw nearly vertically so the rock just goes over the branch and falls nearly straight down. If you get too many other branches, your life is hell.

When I have the light string over the branch and hanging on both ends, I tie heavier dacron to one end, and then pull that up and over (that's the snaggiest step).

Once I have the heavier rope over, I tie my antenna center to that and pull that up.

Be sure to have enough heavy rope for THREE tree-heights. If you only have two tree-heights of rope, then when you want to take your antenna down you have to pull on the feedline, which doesn't take as kindly to it as rope does. If you have three, you can pull it down by the hanging rope.

[bd139]

Swearing at the tree also helps I find

[hermit]

When I told a friend about the bow and arrow he tried to convince me to use a bag of shot because that's what his guys do and he works for a professional tree trimming company.  I'd never have gotten the height and accuracy I needed from that though.  But, pro tip, use a bag of shot.

[Mechatrommer]

i'm not ham (and think no way will be accepted in the community) but fwiw i'll prefer the balloon for more permanent and elegant setup, only drawback is its too much obvious and we'll need clean area...

[PhilipPeake]

Just in case someone doesn't know this - all the trees I am aware of do not extend up into the sky like a telescope, they add new growth above the current plant.  So if you tie a wire at head height on a tree and come back thirty years later you will have a wire embedded in the tree at head height with a great tall tree extending above it.

This is true.

Also worthy of mentioning if this is for long-term deployment is that the rope you use over the branch and then (maybe) tie around the trunk will "disappear" after a year or so. It becomes embedded in the bark/wood of the trunk/branch.

Trees are convenient, but maybe not the best solution for long-term use (ask me how I know...).