TIL: Atlatl Antenna Launch

I learned about atlatls and their application to ham radio today.

First, they're not to be confused with Axolotl, one of the Characters from catscafe:

An atlatl is a spear thrower according to Wikipedia. I vaguely remembered them from third through fifth grade social studies classes in Hobbs, NM, and Anthropology 101 at Ohio State. The reason I rememberd them is becuase of the degree of difficulty in stringing a half-wave diople on Mt. Davidson, W6/NC-423. There's a pair of trees that look awesomre for just such an installation on 10 meters, but the branch of one of them is tantilizingly just out of reach when throwing a spool of butchers twine by hand.

The tree in question:

So, it usually takes upward of half an hour just to get the antenna and radio launched. But! Today, I figured out the answer, and it's—get ready for it—an atlatl.

Placing the spool of twine on the end of a stick, and then throwing it resulted in the antenna line being ready to go on the first throw... two branches higher up than ever before!!!

It's important to mount the spool with the string facing the direction it will leave the end of the stick. If the string trails the spool, there's a pretty high chance it will wrap itselff aroudn the stick.

There's a ton more to say about all this after readhing the atlatl article I referenced above, at least physics-wise, but anyway...

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