Unfortunately noticed that one of the elements from the duoband beam broke. It is easy to repair but takes time. Luckely I have vacation. So I decided to take a day to do antenna repairs and do some other things on the tower. The broken element was fixed within 5 minutes.
The GPA half wave for CB (also use it on 12m and 10m) was already defective for a few months. Luckely the problem was quickly found. The screw that connects the radiator with the coil was gone, even though I had it secured with tape. I decided to drill a hole right through the whole radiator and fix this with a bolt and nut definitely.
Since I also still have the experimental multiband halo which so far did a great job I wanted to have it in the tower as well. Learned from previous work at PB7Z his tower that smaller distance between antennas is not really a big problem. So the duoband beam has been lowerd about 50cm. And the halo fitted almost on top. Unfortunately SWR on 20m was very bad and I though a bit of tuning would help....it did not. Other bands were ok. Something had to be wrong... I decided to disconnect the wiire from the balun and measure the wire which showed a open, with other words it broke somewere. I then decided to exchange the complete 20m wire and found the problem as shown on the photo. After the new wire was placed, this time with normal ty-raps, it was no problem to tune the 20m.
I also wanted to change the ladderline routing further from the tower. Which of course took another few hours. In the end everything went well. SWR good on all bands and inverted-V working well.
The GPA will be exchanged in time. I don't think it will last another storm season. I probabely will install a glassfiber Gainmaster half wave commercial antenna. I've tried to build one from an old Antron 99 but without much success.
Better view on the feedline (ladderline) which is no going straight in parallel with the tower. I now need another antenna switch to change between the GPA and the multiband halo.
3 comments:
Good morning Bas, very good write up on the troubling shooting. Nice you were able to complete all the issues. Very nice pictures of the antenna repairs.
73,
Mike
VE9KK
With your rapid antenna repair i hope you can use the rest of your vacation for fun! :-)
73 Jeff KE9V
@Mike, tnx for the comment. It was a lot of work with satisfying results. And of course nice pictures for thos that like antennas. 73, Bas
@Jeff, shure I will certainly enjoy my vacation. There are other things besides this hobby. But I always manage to spend some time on the radio. 73, Bas
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