Similar effects are experienced with leaky coaxial cable, which requires a 2-inch spacing. Long runs of RadWire should be supported every 15 or 20 feet with Wireguide Spacers. A straight span of 100 feet supported only by 15 pounds tension at either end will have a midpoint-sag of about 1 foot. The wireguides reduce the amount of sag in the wire and the tension on the wire. This termination ensures that the VSWR at the input end of the line is acceptably low regardless of the length of the wire.
Runs can be as short as twenty feet or as long as hundreds of feet.
The SWA directly converts the surface wave into a hemi-directional radiation pattern without having to transition back to coaxial cable. This antenna improves wireless coverage at the end of a RadWire run. A transition cone is used at the far end of the wire whenever RadWire must be transformed back to coax for connection to a coaxial portion of the system. The wire conductor is isolated from ground so that inline amplifier bias may be supplied over the wire and ground return. Formidable obstacles in the path of the wire can be circumvented by transitioning back to coax and then back again to RadWire .