Sunday 11 May 2014

Murphy's Law




Back at the home QTH this morning with an unexpected couple of hours free to play radio, mainly due to the wet weather.
Switched on the rig and linear, tuned up for 40 metres and worked a couple of special event stations taking part in the "mills on the air" weekend. Then I noticed the linear "flashing over" and an erratic SWR reading on my doublet.  On  receive it was like a rapid QSB effect.
So I had to close down and investigate. I checked all the patch leads, they were fine, then went out to the antenna and put my dummy load at the antenna end to check my coax feed, again all ok. So the problem is the antenna itself- not surprising with the high winds and heavy rain we have had over the last few days. It was too wet and windy to drop the antenna today so I am hoping to get some fine weather and time in the evenings this week to investigate. In the meantime I can operate 15 metres and above on the vertical.

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