[CQ-Contest] Slopers and rotators

[Marco Spalluzzi]

Hi guys, I have to report a strange experience happened to me.
I had a fault inside my g800dxa rotator this january, while running the ARRL
rtty roundup.
I replaced the potentiometer inside the rotator at half march, than I had
the same fault at the beginning of may, while working in the ARI contest.
In both cases, I spent a few hours on 40 and 80 working with 2 slopers,
during the night.
In slopers, as you know, central wire of coax is connected to the sloping
wire, shield is going to tower/mast/whatever is grounded.
Using slopers, tower/mast is to be considered as a radiating part of the
system (the missing half of the dipole), so there's a current flowing in the
mast.
Could this be the reason of the potentiometer fault?????
It sounds strange to me, cause I'm not the only one in the world using
slopers, but after what happened I'm not too sure...
What do you think?????
Thanks in advance de Marco - IK2XSL.
(private answers will also be ok ---> ik2xsl at amsat.org)