Categories
Ham Radio Operating

feedline woes – conquered

[Today’s run: 5 miles]

Last night I tried to get on 40 meters (~ 7 MHz ) and do some radio stuff.  But my antenna would not tune up correctly.

After a few trips outside with the flashlight, I decided it wasn’t going to be something I could fix in the dark at 10 pm.

This morning I got back at it.  Turned out it was the part of the system most recently disturbed  (no big surprise there).  When I soldered a connector on the feedline months ago, I must have nicked the solid-wire center conductor of the coax pretty badly.  Taking it off from the bulkhead connector at the house, like I did a couple of weeks ago, must have put enough twist on it to break that center conductor.  I was trying to transmit with a break in the transmission line from the house to the antenna.  That won’t work.

I was glad to find the problem close to the house.  It is a bit more challenging to do soldering work out at the base of the tower, 100′ from the nearest electrical outlet.  (I should get one of those little butane soldering irons, one of these days.)

I chopped off the connector, got the old bits out of it and put it on the new end.  Everything seems to be back in working order now.

I’ve done some VHF operating the last few mornings.  Yesterday there was a short opening into north-central Iowa.  Today there was an opening into SW Louisiana. So I’ve added two new grids to my VHF map.