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Some snow removed from side to have access

This year we have been getting our share of the snow as it seems each week they are forecasting storms with up to 60cm or snow. As a result the snow has been piling up around the property including the shed. The shed is where one end of my End-fed antenna is secured too. The wind seems to blow in a way that causes the snow to drift along one side of the shed. I began to have some SWR issues with the End-fed antenna nothing the antenna tuner was not able to deal with but I wanted to check out why. It seemed the snow drift now well over 9 feet high was getting very close to the End-fed wire and affecting the SWR.

The solution was easy, it was time to get the snowblower out to the shed and blow the snow far far away. With that done the End-fed antenna was happy and so am I. Seems I have to keep an eye on the shed regarding drifting snow. With just a small bit of shovelling here and there this issue will not be a problem again. 

All done.

This brought another question to mind.....I was thinking of getting a vertical antenna maybe the Hustler 4BVT.  But I am now looking at this again as I see this being a high maintenance antenna when the winter comes trying to keep the snow away for the base.

 

Some snow removed from side to have access

This year we have been getting our share of the snow as it seems each week they are forecasting storms with up to 60cm or snow. As a result the snow has been piling up around the property including the shed. The shed is where one end of my End-fed antenna is secured too. The wind seems to blow in a way that causes the snow to drift along one side of the shed. I began to have some SWR issues with the End-fed antenna nothing the antenna tuner was not able to deal with but I wanted to check out why. It seemed the snow drift now well over 9 feet high was getting very close to the End-fed wire and affecting the SWR.

The solution was easy, it was time to get the snowblower out to the shed and blow the snow far far away. With that done the End-fed antenna was happy and so am I. Seems I have to keep an eye on the shed regarding drifting snow. With just a small bit of shovelling here and there this issue will not be a problem again. 

All done.

This brought another question to mind.....I was thinking of getting a vertical antenna maybe the Hustler 4BVT.  But I am now looking at this again as I see this being a high maintenance antenna when the winter comes trying to keep the snow away for the base.

Hard to capture wonky SWR situation

Good afternoon all, during these days of high temperatures along with high humidity comes severe weather. Storms that bring high winds, lots of rain, sometimes hail and most often lightening. When there is a threat of these storms I remove all connections from my antenna to radio and related radio equipment. I have a 3x5 card that reads "antenna disconnected" that is put in front of my power button on the Icom 7610. It's there to remind me what I did as in the past I have actually turned the rig on and was greeted with an out of this world SWR when I attempted to transmit. On the back of the 3x5 card is a list of what has to be reconnected.  

Well back to the topic at hand, I had my cables disconnected and the 3x5 card in place as we did have some severe weather roll through town the night before. I connected the cables, turned on the radio and started my PC. My plan was to get some FT8 contacts in the log before supper prep had to be done. As my rig was transmitting my LDG 200AT pro II turner started clicking which meant it was going through a tune session. This was odd as the tuner memory already selected the sweet spot and it was proven by the SWR meter on the Icom 7610. BUT......as I continued to transmit the SWR was going "wonky" and the LDG tuner was engaging to correct the issue. 

There sure was an issue and I'm not feeling good about it. My troubleshooting began and here is what I did:  

1. I went to antenna 2 on the Icom 7610 which was connected to my dummy load. I transmitted into it at full power for about the time of an FT8 transmission. The result was no SWR issue so the 7610 seemed to be ok. 
2. I then connected the LDG tuner between the dummy load and my transmitter. I know there is no miss-match but if the LDG tuner was acting up it may do it in this ideal matched situation. The result was the tuner did nothing when I transmitted. 
3. I do have an LDG antenna switch (LDG DTS-4) in the maze as well. Once again I transmitted into the dummy load through the LDG tuner and then the LDG DTS-4 to the dummy load. Low and behold the tuner was trying to find a match again! 

Back in late April, I posted the inspection of two heat sinks my Icom 7610. I always get a bit anxious when I remove all the cable from the radio and all that is plugged into it. In the past, I have learned that it saves lots of time and headaches if I use my trusty iPhone and take pictures of the cabling. I really don't have all that many cables at the back of the radio BUT I still take pictures. Once the heat sinks checked out to be without issue it was time to re-connect the radio again along with my trusty pictures.
All was connected and it was time to fire up the radio and see what happened. Everything was good and now it was time to make sure all software was "talking" to the radio. There were no issues so far until I went into transmit. The antenna I am using is an EndFed multiband and I do need a tuner to allow a decent SWR. The odd thing was it seemed my tuner lost its memories of the presets for each band. That was no issue I just started back at square one and returned each band so it was in memory. The issue was after tuning the band I would attempt to transmit and the tuner would start tuning again as the SWR seemed to go back up over 3.0. The first thing I checked was that the antenna was still up and it was as you never know stuff happens. I double-checked the rear of the radio with my pictures and all was good there.
To me, it seemed something was up with either a coax patch cable or the coax out to the antenna. The first thing I wanted to check was the PL259 connectors on the back of the radio. I have in the past had these connectors show issues once they were moved around with being unconnected and re-connected. I try to keep coax angles very slight as I have found over time this can add stress to the connection. I was not looking forward to the whole process but it was the next step that had to be done.
I am not sure why but out of the corner of my eye I noticed my LDG DTS-4 antenna switch which I use as a radio switch (between my Icom 7610 and Elecraft KX3) and not antenna switch as I only have one antenna at the moment. The light on the DST-4 position 1 for my 7610 was out and the light for the KX3 position 4 was on! Problem solved the DTS-4 was grounding out my 7610 as it was not selected and with the simple push of a button my problem was solved.  

Old HDMI monitor cable

I have had some positive moves forward with regards to my RFI in the shack. I am the kind of person who has to sit back and just think things over, go on the internet and step back and have a good look around. Over the past few days that is what I have been doing. I have had great feedback from my blog readers and it has cause me to think and search out ideas. This was the first time I had ever had these types of issues in the shack but then again I have never used an Endfed antenna before. With regards to my internet adventures I came to the understanding that the Endfed antennas that uses the coax as a counterpoise there can be expected issues of RFI in the shack. My Endfed antenna from W1SFR does not have a separate counterpoise connection. On their website the purchaser is informed the coax is the counterpoise. With regards to my W1SFR Endfed antenna I have contacted the owner Steve many times via email with my questions. His support has been great and Steve has been very willing to afford me as much of his time as needed.
I am the kind of person that things just don't click right away and I need time to mull things over. One  thing that came to mind was my monitor issue I was having. I was using an HDMI feed from my PC to the monitor as I always have in the past BUT in the past I was not faced with the RFI issue. Chameleon Loop antenna  and I remembered the coax that came with the antenna had a set of RF

Chameleon coax choke

chokes on the coax. The reading that I have been doing the the comments on my blog all backed up the fact that with Endfed antennas there is a very strong possibility of RF on the coax if it is being used as a counterpoise. I was able to add the coax from Chameleon to my setup with the RF choke section of coax connected to my radio. I did some testings and found my capacitive touch keyer no longer locked up, my SWR was no longer speratic and I have not as of yet checked my electronic washing machine to see if it stops but that will be when the next load of laundry goes in.
I replaced the HDMI cable with a DVI cable that had RF chokes at either end. This solved my monitor issues of it waking up from sleep mode on it's own and characters showing up on the screen.
I did on Friday end up ordering the Balun Designs 1115 Balun and it should be arriving within the next week or so. My positive tests using the RF choked coax tells me that the purchase of the Balun was a good choice. My next step will be to try out a counterpoise that is 25 feet long secured at the PL-259 that feeds the W1SFR Endfed antenna and see what this step produces. I am hoping with the new Balun, the counterpoise and changing the monitor cable will solve the issues I have been experiencing.
It now the next day and my experiment with the separated 25 foot counterpoise have been completed. I stripped one end of the 25 foot piece of wire and attached it to the outside of the PL-259 using a screw clamp similar to the clamps you see on automative rad hoses.....but much smaller. I checked the SWR on 40m, 30m, 20m and 18m and it really did not change much but what did change was the amount of RFI what was showing up on my waterfall on the 7610. I then removed the counterpoise and the offending RFI was gone. So that was good enough for me I am going to keep the Chameleon coax with the chokes in place until the Balun from Balun designs comes in.

Oliver was going to watch over the operation

Each year around this time I bring the MFJ 1788 Mag loop in to take the covers off and have a look around to see how it has faired over the past year. This antenna has been great for me with my very restricted condo situation. I have been able to get all around the world on CW with most of the time 5 watts QRP. I am about 60 feet in the air, it's on the balcony and we do have other condo's all around us but having said that I have been very pleased with the performance of the loop. At first tuning the

Cleaned covers

loop took some time but now I really have the hang of things and am able to tune it in no time. Most of the time the SWR is flat or very close to flat on all bands it's designed for. Now as for band width on 15m it's very nice but as you move closer to 40m it gets very narrow but it is what it is. When reading the reviews of this antenna on Eham many have mentioned how the antenna when new from MFJ had an issue or two. My antenna also out of the box had an issue with the tuning box with a switch that had to be replaced. I purchased the antenna through DX engineering and they were very fast to have MFJ send me a replacement switch.
Now back to my yearly maintenance, the antenna is covered with a patio table cover to help it look like balcony furniture and funny thing is it does not affect the SWR at all so the cover is kept on all the time. This year I picked up a new cover as the old one was 4 years old no longer water proof and showing it's age. I removed the plastic covers  and cleaned the inside out which were really not all that dirty. I found as I do each year some loose nuts and bolts that require

Keep track of parts

snugging up but this year I noticed one of the nut/bolt combination seemed to have some burning on it. This was one of two nut/ bolts that help secure the loop to the tuning cap. All other nut/bolt combinations were fine it was just this one that I ended up replacing with close substitution from my nut/bolt collection.  I have posted a picture of the nut/bolt that was removed, any suggestions as to what may had happened? The nut/bolt was not at all loose and it was only this nut/bolt that had an issue. One other thing I like to do is run the tuning cap full turn in both directions looking for smooth operation, spacing moving fins against the stationary fins and the function of the micro switches that stop the tuning cap at the end of each end.  Overall the antenna was in great shape and just to make sure once it was all back together and covered with new cover I tuned it through each band to make double sure all was well.

New cover and ready to go

Nut/bolt that was replaced

New nut/bolt installed

Checking fin alignment