[Elecraft] Now General RF Issue WAS 160m loop experiment a big failure

[goldtr8 at charter.net]

Dear Group,

I apparently have a bigger problem with RF in the shack and it has 
nothing to do with the loop.

I have been running a successful shack on the second floor of my house 
and as of Friday last week when I installed the loop I have had nothing 
but RF problems.  I thought on Saturday when I removed the ladder line 
from the shack and coiled it up in the tree far away from the shack that 
I would be ok and everything seemed to be ok.

Anyway long story short, now with only the dipole (alpha delta trapped 
dipole at 30 ft) connected in the shack I have terrible RF problems and 
it can occur even barefoot at 100w so I am not pointing to the amp as of 
yet.

I have dropped the antenna and checked that the coax is tight, checked 
to see if the coax is tight at the lighting arrestor, ran with and 
without the tuner connected.   I have rechecked the grounding that I 
have in the shack, which after more research is not adequate, and I will 
be addressing that this weekend.  However, I don't think that this will 
fix it.

Right now I am thinking that I have a bad coax line outside of the 
house.  The reason for this is that I had a new propane tank installed 
and they needed to back the truck up and had to drive over the buried 
coax.  I did put boards down to spread out the load and protect the lawn 
and also the coax.  However the problem has started since this incident.

I pulled the coax out of the ground and it has bend marks at the edges 
where the boards were which to means that it was deformed and maybe it 
is now crushed.

So other than doing a whole new ground setup with more ground rods 
outside and adding more chokes to the coax, I want to check out the coax 
that I have this weekend to determine if I have a "crushed" problem.  Is 
there a way I can check it out with my 259b or is it just replace it and 
see what happens.

Anyway, I am off the air until I get this sorted out.

Basically now I have to start over, and frankly speaking I am a bit 
overwhelmed right now so I just need a friendly group to lean on as I 
really am frustrated right now as my favorite pastime is now no longer 
possible due to some failure of some kind or another.

Thanks in advance for your understanding in a non-elecraft post, but 
this is the most friendly and knowledgeable group on the net that I 
belong to so please help me get my K3 back on the air.

Cheers
Don

~73
Don
KD8NNU