I'm back with good news and bad news and I don't have a clue about the
bad...
To everybody who said Balun or Traps give yourself a well deserved pat on
the back.The other ideas were also good ones, I checked them all out. I
spent most of the day out in 30 degree temps with the wind blowing. I
cranked the tower down and tilted it over, first thing I found was a
3/16" hole melted in the plastic end cap of the 20 meter trap. I took it
apart and performed a visual inspection, could not see anything wrong
with it. I put it back together and covered the hole with 33+ tape. Also
covered the end of the element where the plastic cap was missing. Guess
water got in the end and made it's way to the trap and shorted out to
make the hole, but did not hurt the trap. I checked the coax and found it
ok. So, I thought, lets take the balun out and put in a coaxial choke and
hook it together with a barrel connector. It now has good SWR everywhere.
Now for the bad news. I have a 1/4 wave sloper for 75m mounted 4 feet
below the tribander. I had great SWR when the tower was up all the way
and also when it was cranked down 10 or 12 feet. It didn't seem to care
where it was it worked like a champ! The SWR is now 3 to 1 in the DX
window (it was a tad over 1.5 to 1) and it gets no better anywhere unless
you call 2.5 to 1 @ 4.060 better. Anybody have any ideas on this one? I
didn't touch that antenna. Maybe I should buy another Bencher balun and
see if that fixes it and hope this one will live for a couple of years.
Like I said I don't have a clue on this one...
Thanks to all who responded to my first problem and I hope we can fix
this one too!
73, Bill KB3AUG
Riverton, WV
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