After the bout of windy weather we had a week or so ago, my mini antenna
farm was wrecked. My HF6V sustained a broken mast, which was easily
repairable.

My OCF dipole on the other hand, stopped working properly.

Originally cut for the standard 80-40-20-10 config, the best SWR near
80 meters has risen to around 4.37 MHz, 40 meters is around the correct
frequency, but has SWR has risen a bit to around 2.5. 20 meters is over
3, and 10 is better than 7.

18 MhZ also has a 1.2:1 SWR.

SWR measured with a MFJ259 meter.


The specs of the antenna are (roughly, as I'm doing this from memory)

48 feet short side, 130 long side

4:1 Balun

Height around 50 feet.

Coax coiled balun near house entrance Coax split just above balun for
lightning arrester installation.


Since I bought a new 4:1 balun at Dayton last year to replace one that I
fixed a while back, I decided to replace it. Same result.

I took the choke balun and lightning arrester out of the picture to
isolate them, and measured from there. No difference.

Coax connectors look good.

So what I am left with is the coax and the antenna wire itself.

Unless someone has played an *awesome* practical joke on me, the
antenna dimensions haven't changed.

So can coax go bad in a way that will raise the lowest SWR in the way I
describe? Of course I could just replace it, but I'd like to know why.



- 73 de Mike KB3EIA -