Basically after having 2 radios "fail" a little while ago I've been trying to chase down exactly why it happened, I received them back the other day, they were checked as 100% OK, Final transistors are fine and the PSU I'm using is also fine, I tried running an ATX PSU from a pc but unfortunately it makes a little too much noise to be useful (fan noise mostly) and since the other PSU checked out ok I'll continue using it.
After checking the cable I noticed (waaaay up in the air) that the connector to the antenna was starting to get a little rusty so I finally took down the Antenna, it weighs about 80kg at half way down, the base post is about 12ft tall and weighs about 30-40kg, with another 12 ft extension of Aluminium and then the antenna it started feeling like i was trying to lower a car haha, it was funny taking off the base of the mast and realising just how light all that Aluminium really is on its own.
When I finally got it down without destroying anything I noticed the Antenna Base connector (plastic clip that secures base to the bracket) was broken, turns out that the Antenna was pretty much just floating around down there, the spring was moving in the wind and its been the cause of most of my problems, as that spring twists and contorts in the wind my swr goes totally insane, this can obviously happen while transmitting so it was my biggest concern, using (cheap) rope I've managed to secure it back to position until I can replace that clip, hopefully someone here knows what to ask for? is it a conduit clip of sorts?
On the plus side, once I cleaned the connector (Rusty, took ages to get the thread cleaned up) and got the base sitting close to it's home position, my swr went from the old 1.5-1.7 (1-40) to 1.1-1.2 which is the best I've ever seen here, when it rains or the wind really blows (the last 2 days) I can't really transmit as the swr is just all over the place (Worst being 2.5!!!) and I can't get the thing anywhere near as high in the air as I'd like.
I'll try and post some pics of my dodgy repair job in the facebook group later
