Phil,

The "Funnoodle" floating tube (actually a swimming aide for kids) is
the inner core material used for all my FSL's, and provides the perfect
combination of resilience and stiffness, even for very heavy FSL's (up
to 25 pounds). It has a convenient hole through the middle, to exactly
fit a 3/4" diameter PVC pipe section for your FSL's horizontal hanging
frame. A photo of the "Funnoodle" (and other FSL core materials) is
posted at http://www.mediafire.com/i/?sb60cm5c31e8tw4

The "Funnoodle" flolating tube is available here locally at both
Walmart and Fred Meyer stores, and costs only about $4 for a 6-foot
long tube. That should be long enough for you to make about 15 FSL's
with it :-)

73, Gary


-----Original Message-----
From: D1028Gary <D1028Gary@...>
To: ultralightdx <ultralightdx@...>
Sent: Sat, Sep 3, 2011 12:33 pm
Subject: Re: [ultralightdx] Re: Affordable (?) 7" Diameter FSL Design




Hi Phil,

The 7" FSL (designed for MW coverage) uses 20 turns of the 660/46 Litz
wire, and each turn takes 23" of wire. Ordering 45 feet of the Litz
wire should be more than sufficient, assuming that your padding
material does not make your FSL's final diameter much larger than my
model (just under 7"). Please note that my 7" (Affordable) FSL design
uses 660/46 Litz wire from the eBay seller "Mkmak222," and that all the
performance reports and MP3's were based on the use of that high
quality wire. Substitution of lower quality Litz wire may adversly
affect your FSL's performance.

Concerning the delayed completion of the 7.5" Longwave plug-in
loopsticks, I still do plan to complete construction of them all, as
time allows (there is an extreme shortage of free time here,
currently). That particular loopstick model requires both electronic
and power tool construction experience to complete, which is presumably
the reason why no other technician has volunteered to meet the surging
demand. Sorry for the delay, but your loopstick job has not been
forgotten, Phil.