[TenTec] swr

[Richards]

Agreed on all points, Jerry !      Definitely pushes the tuner to
its limits.  I never work top band with high power...   I cannot imagine
how little power is actually radiating outward when I work 160 on
my big stick !

I think antenna vendors should admit these big sticks don't work on 160 
- and only marginally well on 80 meters, and then ONLY WITH A LOT OF 
HELP - like a big tuner,  PLUS  loading up the feed line as 
DX-Engineering suggests,  adding at least 50 feet of wire off the top, 
a substantial matching unit at the bottom,  and THE BIGGEST COAX  you 
can afford,  and especially with a lot of luck.   I tested mine with 
RG-8x,  RG-8U, and LMR-400-DB.    It made a huge difference, and I 
figure it would work even better with HARD LINE !

I think the fact they work on 160 is purely a bonus.  Using low power, 
it does get me into a couple of fairly local rag chew nets with some 
guys I do some contesting with, and that is enough for me.  Our bunch 
uses a huge tower for 160 meter contesting and THAT works much better.

========================   James - K8JHR  ======================


On 8/15/2010 10:02 PM, Dr. Gerald N. Johnson wrote:

Fundamentally the 43 foot
> vertical is way too short for 160 and needs a BIG loading coil
> containing about 77 feet of wire, and forcing that to be done in the
> tuner will tend to smoke the tuner.   There are other solutions, but the
> long coax or the series loading coil at the pole base should be the
> simplest solutions.

> Its tuner abuse.

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