Topband: amp tripping on 160

[Tim Shoppa]

If everything is fine at lower power but trips at higher power, it could be
RFI. But I would suspect an arcover somewhere.

It sounds like your feedpoint is low impedance but there can be arcovers on
the insulator at the end of your L, too. Or if your L is spaced off from
the tower with insulators, those could be arcing over. And those may be
more susceptible to moisture so might happen depending on temperature and
humidity.

Tim N3QE

On Fri, Oct 29, 2021 at 10:44 AM WW3S <ww3s at zoominternet.net> wrote:

> After two great nights of being able to receive, I am beyond frustrated,
> as I cannot transmit....something happened recently, and I cannot figure
> it out... I suspect its RFI, but not sure why.....as soon as I transmit
> on my Inverted L, my SPE 1.3KFA amp trips, saying SWRT exceeds
> limits.....yet the SWR displayed is 1.46 to 1......new to me, but not
> new to this season is my tower which holds my Inverted L.....it was 50'
> of Rohn 25, with a Hazer, its now a Alumnatower 48', with a
> wonderpole.......but.....that setup did work, as I worked S9OK and
> 3DA0RU with it....I added a second receiving loop in the front yard, so
> thought that was it, but I took those cables out from the shack and
> still have a problem.....yesterday morning, I found the short piece of
> coax had a nick in it, from the mower I guess, so replaced it, and
> shortened my L a bit to bring the SWR a bit further up the band.....I
> tested yesterday morning and it was great, low , mid and high power,
> even 1300 watts of RTTY, no failure, I tried several times during the
> day and all was great until darkness, and as soon as I keyed the amp,
> failure.....I pulled out what little I have left of my hair trying to
> figure this out......the wonderpole is grounded and I "assume" the tower
> is grounded thru that......should I separately ground the tower? Doing
> so will complicate tilting it over, plus I only have copper grounding
> attachments, I thought I read where I shouldn't use dissimilar
> metals.....but willing to try anything to get my 160 TX ability
> back...thoughts?
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