During the sweepstakes contest I tried an early morning S & P on 160m but my usual antenna, an Inverted "L" was not tuning at all so I switched to My big 260' dipole and used that one instead. After the contest was over, I decided to try and fix the "L" antenna. This antenna has a coax switch and tuner inside the shack before it changes to RG-8 coax for the run outside to a weatherproof box where it transitions to #12 insulated wire and ground radials. I also have an RG-8 balun inline there too.
I thought the problem was probably at the box/transition point but decided since the shack is nice and warm to start troubleshooting inside first. I'm glad I did because disconnecting the RG-8 and testing with My analyzer towards the outdoors showed an antenna tuned to 1.810 MHz like designed for. Problem is in the shack so I next put the analyzer inline on the tuner output towards the RG-8 transition. Bingo!! Problem area found and looking closer I realized I still had a temporary jumper of RG-58 from the tuner to the outside feed.I replaced this with a proper jumper and now it tunes just fine. The antenna works and sounds as good as first installed!
I repaired the jumper on my work bench--bad shield solder connection and added it to My spare jumper collection. I also found my Heil Pro set microphone adapter and did a test to make sure it works. Now I'm ready for the next contest.
73--Tim
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