I previously had a 132 ft long T2FD antenna circa 2008-2015 or so, that was eventually destroyed in a storm. It was a reasonably good performing antenna, and I've wanted to put another back up, which I just did this morning.
The new antenna is shorter, it is about 58 ft long, I made it with the wire from an 80 mb dipole that I was never really happy with, because it was fairly low, and the location wasn't great for getting it higher due to nearby trees. It's made with #16 insulated hookup wire, my antenna wire of choice lately. You can get 500 ft spools on eBay for about $30 shipped if you watch for deals.
The spacers are 20 inch long pieces of 1" PVC pipe, because I happened to have some of that length as leftovers from another project. Each has two small holes drilled near each end for the wire to pass through. The old T2FD used wooded spacers, which eventually broke. There are 5 of them one in the center (which also supports the balun), one on each end, and one in the middle of each span.
The balun is a 4:1 [EDIT: I think it is really a 9:1], actually the one from the old T2FD. I'd normally use one of my Jellyfish transformers but I am out of them right now and didn't want to make a new one and wait for the resin to harden
I think a slightly higher impedance ratio will be better, so it will be interesting to switch out the balun in a few days and see what the difference is. Coax feed is my usual 75 ohm RG-6 which goes from the balun down to a grounding block, underground in conduit, comes above ground with another grounding block, then up to the shack.
The terminating resistor is made from a pair of very old carbon composition resistors, 1 watt each, which are just over 900 ohms when used in parallel.
I did some research online as to the optimum tilt angle, as well as running some antenna models. It seems the best performance is from a nearly vertical orientation, not tilted at 45 degrees or so as many do. The old T2FD was actually not very far from nearly horizontal, as it was 132 ft long and I don't happen to have any redwoods in my yard.
I shot a line over a tree last night with the EZ Hang (it went over perfectly first time, how often does that happen?). Based on the known length of the antenna and the measurements I was able to take at ground level, I could estimate that the top of the T2FD is about 59 ft high. The low end is 3 ft high and 15 ft horizontally from a vertical orientation. That works out to about a 15 degree tilt from vertical, oriented to the northeast.
Performance:
I'm surprised how well it works actually, given the size. It works even down to the MW band, I was able to hear 530 from Canada at 1700 UTC in the afternoon. And the 1620 pirate from about 10 miles away. Both with signal levels equal to the NE beverage antenna. And on the high end of HF, it's incredible on the 11m band. Much stronger signals than my other antennas. On the 49m band it picks up CFRX 6070 and WBCQ 6160 (the only signals there now) about the same as my 43/48m folded dipole antenna, perhaps 6160 is even a hair better. Difficult to tell with 6070 as the signal is so strong anyway. It will be more telling shortly when the European DX starts to roll in on 49 meters, and eventually pirates on 48 and 43 meters. I'll write a followup reply post with more performance information after using it for a while.
