[TowerTalk] Pre-Installation Tuning of Cushcraft TEN-3 Yagi

[Jason Dugas]

I just wanted to send an update on this thread.  I pulled this project out again and decided to TRASH the Cushcraft directions.  Maybe that procedure worked at Cushcraft headquarters, but in my back yard they were Horrible with a capitol "H".  One foot off the ground was not enough to get accurate measurements of SWR.
 
Instead, I mounted the antenna on top of a couple stacked 10 ft. poles (total 20 ft).  This got the antenna up far enough so that atleast I felt the antenna tuner had a fighting chance of giving me some meaninful data.  Sure enough, the antenna tuned up quite well after some adjustments.
 
By digging a small hole in the yard, I was able to push the antenna up and let it down quickly (by myself) in order to make adjustments after each measurement.  Turns out I really had to push the shorting stub of the match out a ways in order to get my preferred band coverage of 28 - 28.6 MHz.
 
Now I'm ready to put the antenna up on the tower and get completely DIFFERENT results due to the tower and other antennas that will be near it. ;-)  I'm sure it'll be good enough for what I'm after though.JasonKB5URQ
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