[TowerTalk] Inverted L SWR High

[W4nf@aol.com]

I have an Inverted L up on 160 that runs up next to my tower for 75'.  It is 
stood off from the tower about 3' at the top, supported by a piece of anlge 
iron and an insulator (ceramic about 4") then goes out to a tree.  The bottom 
of the L is about 8' from the tower base.  I have a LJE radial hub that I tie 
the radials into and have 16 radials that are about 60' long and another 16 
that are 120' long.  On the feed lne coming into the radial hub I have 50 
ferrite cores over the coax (bought as a choke kit from one of the coax 
vendors).  The problem is that I can't seem to get the SWR below 2:1.  It 
does have a nice dip at 1.830 but as I said it just won't go below a 2:1.  I 
also had an 80 meter vertical tied into the same point at the base and 
thought that it may be detuning the 160 L so I removed it.  No change.  The 
tuner on the 1000MP brings it right down but I try to make my antennas as 
resonate as possible.  The bandwidth is pretty narrow, probably about 30 kHz 
either side of the dip, where it goes to a 3:1 and then higher beyond.  I 
know some of you are going to say to shunt feed the tower but I haven't found 
a check source of vacuum variables yet and I would like to have this one play 
better.  It used to have a lower SWR before I put the LJE Radial Bus in and 
the metal angle standoff at the top of the tower but I can't figure how that 
would affect anything but in a positive way.  Any comments would be 
appreciated.  Thanks and 73, Jack W4NF

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