I had a number of lightning strikes when I had my 160' tower in Illinois. Lightning really does strange things. Maybe you can lessen the damage by installing more ground rods and installing a single
In Aruba, I have seen tremendous corrosion to aluminum when it is in contact with stainless steel. John KK9A /P40A My recommendation would be to use a small sheet of stainless steel so you don't have
Are the radials on the ground or elevated? If they are on the ground, how do they get their from the 4 foot high base? Did you try directly feeding it with the coax center going the vertical and the
I own 6 TIC ring rotators and I have never used a capacitor on either the potentiometer or the motor. The only problem that I have had with either component was due to lightning strikes, however I ne
I too have suffered some equipment damage while using Polyphaser protectors after lightning strikes. Besides the equipment damage, I had to replace a number of Polyphaser rotator protectors because t
My advice is to only buy from companies that have good customer service and technical support. John KK9A David, I am happy you got your Force 12 antenna. My story isn't as pleasant. I placed an order
You should read the manual and use their formula for calculating the antenna load. John KK9A I recently acquired a Yaesu G800S rotor and Sommers XP504 yagi (both used). I am considering adding the 17
Blake, unfortunately it looks like you'll have to drink another beer just for the replacement can. Perhaps you can find a volunteer. Lightning sure does interesting things. I certainly agree with N2I
I don't think that it makes any difference where the antenna is mounted. Excessive voltages are induced into every wire in the vicinity of the strike. John KK9A The comment was made a few days ago ab
The problem with tape (even Scotch 88) is it leaves a gummy black mess on the cables and tower when you remove it. Cable ties can quickly be snipped off and there's no mess. John KK9A This is getting
Unless you have an extremely short tower, the guy anchor is not near the antenna. It is also in the ground so who knows what it's resonant frequency is. I don't believe that the leader will cause any
You should should be about to get and SWR of less than 1.7:1 with no matching. Adding more radials will not help your problem. This is normally a simple antenna and of if an SWR of 1:1 is desired you
I agree that the tower is too short, however when he measures it, it is electrically too long and has an SWR of 2.6:1. Something is very wrong and adding an inductor won't help until the problem is r
I concur, he should definitely try measuring the antenna as close as possible to the base. He hasnt determined any reasonance yet, just some readings that are easy to misinterpet by those not well ve
I have two Array Solutions Sixpaks and they work great for SO2R. If you plan on switching the relay from your band decoder, you may experience the same problem that I did. These relays require at lea
The subject line says that the beam is slipping on the mast and not in the rotator. If you install the Yaseu DXA1000 per the instructions, it will not slip without breaking something. I am not famili
I forgot to mention that usually there is a saddle between the mast and antenna mounting plate and the u-bolt squeezes everything together. It is important that the radius of the saddle and U-bolt ma
I agree that this antenna should be usable with no matching. I would expect an SWR around of less than 1.5:1, depending on your ground loss. I have used a 1/4 wire 160m vertical hung from my tower gu
When do you find the BOP useful - is it useful for DX contest? Hello Stein! Starting on page 130 of Volume 7 of the ARRL Antenna Compendium shows the mono band stacking schematics I use. They are bui
Many contest stations use multiple relays to not only select the band, but also to select which antennas on that band will be used and how they will be phased. There is nothing wrong your idea of usi