/diy/ - Do It Yourself

It may come as a big surprise, but the tests I present in this article strongly suggest that these “no-nos” are largely untrue. You‘ll also see an easy home-brew method for using open line in adverse situations you may have never even considered.

Instead of just baldly accepting ham hearsay that my idea was ridiculous, I
began searching the internet and the literature for actual loss figures for
open line in other than in open air. Guess what? There are no hard figures,
only unsupported opinions. I wanted real answers, so I decided to run
quantitative tests of my own.

Figure 1: Adverse, non-open-air, situations for 450 Ohm window line: (1) on dry concrete, (2) lying on wet garden soil (3) directly on an aluminum patio roof, (4) in the open (comparison reference). Figure 2: 450 Ohm window line encased in the polyethylene foam tubing for insulating 34 in. pipe.

Source: http://www.w6nbc.com/articles/openwireline.pdf