Several years ago, I put up a second hand CL33. Daily skeds with a /MM
operator on the W7-KL7 run, showed a drastic reduction in performance from
the previous antenna. Subsequent investigation showed a defective trap
coil, apparently damaged by a lightning strike.
I rebuilt the reflector element to make it full size (36' mol), added a
full size 15M reflector and ignored 10M because of low activity there. The
change in performance was amazing. Even 10M was improved and I subsequently
added a full size reflector for that band also.
I did not pay much attention to SWR values in those days because we all
used tube type rigs which did not seem to care much.
Check your parasitic elements for opens or shorts. Full size parasitic
elements may improve performance even more. It is very difficult to get
optimum performance on 3 bands with elements containing traps.
Studying the K7LXC/NoAX HF TRIBANDER PERFORMANCE reports confirmed my
suspicions.
INK N4OO
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