I put up the same antenna about a month ago. The hardware on mine was
in fine shape......no problems at all. The balun is just as you
mentioned imho. The radials in my estimation are too small and the
balun is to keep RF from coming back down the coax shield. Looks to me
like the coax for the balun was of okay quality.
The big problem I had was that the band width on 20 & 12 meters is
skewed towards towards the lower part of the band and there are no
adjustment procedures. Have to use a tuner on the upper part of the
band. Looks like just shorten the studs on the ends of the coils to
raise the center of the bandwidth. Not a clue anywhere as to how much
to shorten them. Know where I can get a mfj-259 cheap. Hi!
It does play a bit better than a carolina windom I've had up a
while....and, seem liek it does DX much better.
Jim
Dinsterdog@aol.com wrote:
>I recently put up a Cushcraft MA5V vertical for HF satellite work. The
>antenna is working ok- but since I can not find a human to speak to at
>Cushcraft, or anyone there to return emails, I have a question about the
>antenna design that maybe someone here can answer. If you look at a photo of
>the antenna, you'll notice a very large coaxial balun at the bottom of the
>antenna PVC support. The PVC isolates the antenna which sits about about 4
>feet above the balun feedpoint, and the balun is at the bottom of the PVC
>support- - The balun form is about 2 3/8 inches in diameter, 10 1/2 inches
>long, and it takes about 30 feet of RG59 coax twisted around the form to
>create the balun.......what's with this monster balun?? What is it doing??
>I've never seen anything like it before- MY guess is that it is overkill to
>keep RF off the feed line- ??? Any thoughts on this?
>
>BTW, the QC at Cushcraft is awful...I had to redrill, rebuild, and modify a
>lot of missing and/or misized parts- Blah! And the enclosed RG59 to form the
>balun is rat shack junk- But the antenna is working FB! Seriously, it's
>working well above expectations-
>
>73 Paul N0AH
>_______________________________________________
>TowerTalk mailing list
>TowerTalk@contesting.com
>http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/towertalk
>
>
--
Your favorite stores, helpful shopping tools and great gift ideas.
Experience the convenience of buying online with Shop@Netscape!
http://shopnow.netscape.com/
|