[Antennas] cushcrap R-7000 or Yaesu watt meter.

[John Luthy]

My wonderful antenna Or my Yaesu watt meter and pissed off my whole
family

Seems somthing isn't quite able to perform up to the task is is
advertised to do.

All I asked of it was to TX on 40m at 700 watts with a SWR of 1.4 , I
don't think this is out of line as it is supposed to be able to handle
1.5kw .... all was well for about 15 min. of 50% duty on RTTY . was
calling CQ on 40 .... 8 seconds on ...10 seconds off.  When all of a
sudden the smoke alarm goes off. and I see a cloud of smoke rising
from my watt meter. I quicky disconected the coax (burning my fingers
in the process) and cut the DC line to the meter. Then tossing the
meter from hand to hand like a hot potato I finaly got it outside. But
not before I filled the house with the rancid smell of  burnning
circut boards.

After the smoke cleared I checked the SWR on the antenna and It is
about 15:1  on 40m  it was 1.7:1 before. the "fire". My Infrared temp
guage showes a noticable rise in temp in the area of  the 40m trap on
the "antenna"

Now I have been using the watt meter for 2 years with the setup I have
and have been able to run 1kw on 20m rtty to the mosley TA-33 with no
problem.

I was told that this "antenna" is not very good and is prone to trap
failures.

So the question to the folks with more experiance than me is........
what went first


BTW the station is
IC 746
TA-33
R-7000
SB-220
bunch 'o'wires
and "$$$"

KF6QCQ
john with only  96 points in the rtty ru contest. .....  booooo
whhhooooooooo