Antenna notes

So it has been about a week (or more?) since I dried out all the Buddipole components (I hope, lol), which is to say about a week that the testing and inspection has been … pending.

I started this morning by identifying the 3 calibration plugs for the NanoVNA (this turned out to be easy on closer examination; Open was hollow, Short had a t-shaped insert, Load was slightly longer to accomodate the resistor. I checked with the DMM just to be certain) and then running a calibration over just the 20 meter band. Changed the batteries in the Simpson 260. Once I got rolling, I didn’t stop to take pictures.

I untangled the so-called counterpoise and cut off about a 20 foot piece to trim in the field.

I hooked up the Simpson 260 to both ends of the center conductor of the coax, then went down the entire length inch by inch, foot by foot; bending, twisting, shaking while watching the meter needle for the slightest sign of a twitch. Nothing. Conductor intact. (looking for intermittent opens is the one thing you cannot do with a digital meter). The braid has so many redundant conductors, I did not check it. Hooked up to center and braid and manipulated both ends looking for intermittent shorts; nothing. The “balun” on the cable is a choke balun, just a few ferrites to suppress RF on the braid (so really an unun, right?) and therefore 1:1; anyway, I terminated it with a 51 ohm resistor and some alligator clips and ran an SWR scan: 1.2:1 more or less.

All of that is just a long-form way of saying that I found absolutely nothing wrong with any of it, within the limits of my tests.

I’m going to take the whole thing out to a park and try it again, and we’ll see …

Thanks for visiting driftlessqrp!.