Staycation, Part II

Back to the 9913. Once it was down, I put the multimeter to it and found that it was shorted. That's a problem obviously. I put I cut off the connector in preparation for putting on a new one, thinking that was the issue. I used my DXEngineering prep tool and discovered that the center conductor was an odd shade of black. OK, so this *is* a water incursion problem. I wonder? I cut off 6" and blew into the end. Lo and behold, a drop of water.

That makes this section of feedline toast, but what about the section connected to the D-56?

I put the multimeter and analyzer on that section - no short, but some resistance and SWR to dummy load was 3:1 instead of 1:1. Looks like I need *two* new sections of coax.

Fortunately for me, I had acquired a spool of LMR400 from a previous employer (yes, I did get permission!) so I cut new lengths for both antennas. While I was at it, I cut a slightly longer piece for the 10-m dipole.

Once up on the roof, I found out that the piece attached to the D-56 had good reason to have high SWR - in several places, the cable was chafed down into the dielectric! The way the cable runs, it comes down straight to the roof ... where the asphalt shingles abrade it as it moves with the wind. I have yet to solve this issue. The 40/80 could also potentially suffer from the same issue, but we solved it by moving the antenna closer to the NE end which allowed the cable to hang away from the roof.

With new cable in place on both antennas, SWR was now where it was supposed to be!

Wires were now down so it was on to the mast. The new anchors had set so it was time to prep the antennas. Got the cables secured and made sure that the wouldn't bind when rotated 360 degrees. Pushed the first section up and attached the 6-m loop. Got the whole thing up in the
air and attached the new guys.

Sounds simple, but took place over a couple of days. Temps were in the 90s and being on the asphalt roof did not help!

Even got the 6-m loop connected to the switch so that all four ports are now in use. This came in handy the following week during a 6 meter opening where I was able to switch between the loop and the 40-80 dipole, which is, oddly, resonant on 6 as well.