[TowerTalk] CushCraft A4S+40 meters

[Robert Goddard]

Hello All,

I recently purchased a CushCraft A4S with the 744 add-on kit. I put it together and set up each element according to the instructions provided and insatlled on my tower. The SWR was so incredibly high on all bands rendering it useless! All bands are 1 MHz low, ie.. 20.200 MHz for 15 meters. I took the antenna down and proceeded to try this again after tech support email and voice mail messages to CushCraft. They advised to remove the add-on kit and again measure each element according to the instructions. Well, the antenna is still useless. I was advised to shorten the driven element by 4" and see if that helps, to make a long story short I have shortened the driven element 8 1/2" to make it resonant on 10 and 15 meters and shortened the 40 meter element by 9". After all this adjusting, 20 meters is still a bit too long ie.. 2.0:1 VSWR at 14.260 MHz. I hope after installing in free space on the tower the measurements do not change again.
Has anybody had these problems with the A4? 

73, Rob N3NFX  

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