I spent past weekend operating as SV3AUW/A from my resort house in Mani region.
My SEM tranZmatch was coping the mismatch of my dipole antenna in all of HF amateur frequenses until I get the fist RF bite. Accidentally I touched the chassis of my radio and I felt the "familiar" sting of RFI and I smell the equally "familiar" smell of RF burned skin. Nothing serious but an RF bite is a painful one!
My radio was "seeing" a perfect match and was pumping 100 watts continuously but that power was never reaching the antenna or was never transmitted from it. There was a fault and I had to find it.
The proof of pudding is eating and the proof of faulty antenna is climbing the tiled roof.
It didn't took me long to see the broken wire of my ladder line at the centre plate as you can see in the photos.
Usually I carry a few tools with me, just-in-case, this time though due to a reason I took nothing with me. The only tool that was handy, was an old and rusty pair of pliers with the help of I managed to make a temporary, and efficient if I may add, repair of the broken wire by using a small piece of hookup wire to splice the two ends.
Next weekend or next time I'll go back, I will definitely have with me a big roll of extension cable, soldering iron, solder, the full monty!
By the way, I am surprised with the excellent efficiency of my ASTU which firstly matched and saved the output transistors of my radio and secondly, although it was operating erroneously it managed to pump enough RF to the one side of my dipole antenna so to work on 25/07/2017 at 20:55UTC with JH3NGD receiving 57 report!
My SEM tranZmatch was coping the mismatch of my dipole antenna in all of HF amateur frequenses until I get the fist RF bite. Accidentally I touched the chassis of my radio and I felt the "familiar" sting of RFI and I smell the equally "familiar" smell of RF burned skin. Nothing serious but an RF bite is a painful one!
My radio was "seeing" a perfect match and was pumping 100 watts continuously but that power was never reaching the antenna or was never transmitted from it. There was a fault and I had to find it.
The proof of pudding is eating and the proof of faulty antenna is climbing the tiled roof.
It didn't took me long to see the broken wire of my ladder line at the centre plate as you can see in the photos.
Usually I carry a few tools with me, just-in-case, this time though due to a reason I took nothing with me. The only tool that was handy, was an old and rusty pair of pliers with the help of I managed to make a temporary, and efficient if I may add, repair of the broken wire by using a small piece of hookup wire to splice the two ends.
Next weekend or next time I'll go back, I will definitely have with me a big roll of extension cable, soldering iron, solder, the full monty!
By the way, I am surprised with the excellent efficiency of my ASTU which firstly matched and saved the output transistors of my radio and secondly, although it was operating erroneously it managed to pump enough RF to the one side of my dipole antenna so to work on 25/07/2017 at 20:55UTC with JH3NGD receiving 57 report!
