[TowerTalk] Voltage and SWR - an ignorant question

N4ZR n4zr at comcast.net
Fri Feb 1 09:41:52 EST 2019


Last week I was in the 160 CW contest using a jury rigged antenna - my 
40M parasitic sloper fed with open wire line from a 4:1 allegedly 5 KW 
balun via a long run of Buryflex to the shack.  Believe it or not, it 
didn't work badly, but...

The swr at the amp's antenna tuner was about 4:1, but when I put 1500 
watts on it at the end of the contest the amp would quickly fault 
indicating an SWR of 20:1.  My guess is that something was flashing 
over. However, on 40 meters the antenna continues to operate and take 
full power just fine.  Its native SWR on that band is under 1.8:1.

So, my question, does higher SWR mean higher voltage peaks on the 
feedline? Once the snow stops, I'm going to go looking, but thought any 
advice I could get before that would help.


-- 

73, Pete N4ZR
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