so ive been trying to build a 40m dipole for about a month now and the wire keeps snapping at the insulators. using 14awg stranded house wire and some ceramic insulators i got from universal radio. the thing works great for maybe 2 weeks then snap, usually during windy weather. anyone else run into this? thinking maybe the wire is too stiff or something but 14awg should handle the tension right?

running about 100 watts on it when it does work, swr stays under 1.5 across most of the band which is nice. just getting tired of climbing the tree every few weeks lol

had the same problem with house wire on my 80m dipole. switched to some flexweave antenna wire from DX engineering and havent had a failure since. the stranded house wire just wasnt designed for the constant flexing in the wind. also make sure your insulators arent too small - you want the wire to have some room to move without binding up on the edges

Yeah this has been bugging me for weeks too! I ended up using some spare coax for the last few feet before the insulators - just stripped the outer jacket and used the center conductor. seems to handle the flexing better than solid wire. probably not the most elegant solution but it works and I havent had to climb back up there in 3 months now