[TowerTalk] Cushcraft/MFJ Traps

[Wayne Kline]

Scot,



Thanks for the heads UP. I bought an new Chushcraft AW3 antenna.  I got to install it one day B-4 My Major Lightning Strike ( READ UGLY)

Long story short I never did a VSWR sweep because there were storms in the area and I hate being on a tower or handling coax  lines with thunder heads in the area.

Well testing last week  the 12 meter  band  sweep  was 1:23 -1  BUT the 17 meter was 2:2-1 @ 18.070 and 3:5-1 @ 18:165    I took it down  yesterday   and am assuming it’s a trap issue.

Again I assume  I’ll have to pry the other coil cover  up to gain access to the coil’s   stay tuned



  I do not want to point fingers to MFJ yet



Wayne  W3EA





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________________________________
From: TowerTalk <towertalk-bounces at contesting.com> on behalf of K9MA <k9ma at sdellington.us>
Sent: Thursday, September 12, 2019 2:22:02 PM
To: towertalk at contesting.com <towertalk at contesting.com>
Subject: [TowerTalk] Cushcraft/MFJ Traps

I recently ordered some replacement traps for my old A3S. One was
defective, so I took it apart. I was appalled at the poor quality. While
the original traps had several pop rivets, in addition to the coil
screws, connecting the tubing to the plastic insulator, the MFJ version
had only the two screws in the very end of the tubing. The coil wires
were sometimes wrapped the wrong way around the screws, and some of the
screws weren't even tight. Where the original coil was coated with some
kind of thick lacquer, the MFJ ones were bare.

The moral of the story is don't even think about going to the trouble of
putting up an MFJ/Cushcraft beam without taking apart all the traps and
fixing the above problems.

73,

Scott K9MA

--
Scott  K9MA

k9ma at sdellington.us

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