I'm not one to give up on a bad idea if I think I have half a chance of making it work for a while. So it was that today I fixed my dipole with a new questionable strain relief design (click for larger version):
Yes indeedy. So far it hasn't broken. Reception on 80m isn't awesome but that's probably because it's more of a 10m or 20m dipole and that it's still not all that high. It may come down when it rains or when the wind blows around the branch to which it's attached. Not shown in the above diagram is the 10 loops of coax which form the air-core balun.
Sometime I'll make one properly. Honest. But for the meantime, I'm on HF again! \o/