[Antennas] need suggestions on inverted L

FireBrick FireBrick" <[email protected]
Mon, 8 Mar 2004 20:38:15 -0600


I built a very skimpy inverted L.
Shack is at back basement wall of house.
Less than 5 feet of coax to base of tower.
Braid to ground rods with a few radials, way too few and too short.
But that's all I can do.
Center conductor to wire that runs up the side of my Wilson Rotating Tower.
A pivoting yardarm just under the yagi, supports the wire and it then goes at a slightly
downward slope to the back of my lot.
Vertical wire is approx 50' and horizontal wire is approx 60'.
Again I know this is insufficient but it's what I can fit.

So here's the problem.
I'm using a MT3000A tuner and I can tune it very well.
No problem getting a 1:1 match (very narrow bandwidth as would be expected)

but if I try to use my amp, it spits, arcs across the capacitors.
This is NOT a California Kilowatt, 1000 watts at best.

If I mistune the tuner to approx 2:1, then it will accept the amp.
I realize it's not getting as much power due to the higher swr and rollback.
But it stops spitting.
I was able to work a few good new ones on 160 during the contest this way.

Can anyone help?
I'm missing something here....I should be able to figure this out.
It could be senility...or just plain stupidity, but I'm not making any headway.

As always, please and thank you.




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Smartness runs in my family. When I went to school I was so smart my teacher was in my
class for five years.
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Bill H. in Chicagoland