[K3PZN-List] Lightning, antennas, and coax

[Andy Leeds]

What this boils down to is devising a troubleshooting plan so that you 
eliminate components as the issue until you isolate the one (or more) 
that are causing the problem. Before doing anything super technical I'd 
start out with a physical inspection of the antenna and coax, looking 
for deformity, burns, etc. Connectors and where the coax touches or 
comes closest to the ground are the first places to look. Even without 
electrical damage a tree branch or flying debris may have hit the 
antenna and damaged it.

Once that's clear you need to start isolating components, probably the 
simplest way to go here is to put a dummy load out at the end of the 
coax where the ladder line starts. You should have a pretty perfect 
match across the HF spectrum.

For the built in tuner a 75 ohm coax jumper before the 50 ohm load 
creates a mismatch ~1.5:1 that the tuner should easily cope with. I've 
got a piece or two of 75 ohm laying around you can use for this.

With your description my first bet is the antenna since the behavior 
with the external tuner has changed as well as the internal one, but 
that's a guess.

Andy

On 8/18/2016 9:16 PM, Kyle Thornton wrote:
> Hi All,
> So with all the storms that have been rolling through the area lately I
> think I might have myself a slight issue. I have a terrible feeling that at
> minimum my HF Wire antenna strung up in an inverted V formation @ 30ft is
> fried if not close to it and the HF coax fried as well. Im not 100% sure but
> I think something is up. The HF radio has a built in tuner (480 SAT) and is
> usually wonderful at tuning certain bands up to 20m then is not able to.
> Antenna is 52ft long (Junior G5RV from MFJ) and is cut to to tune 40-10. For
> the jobs that the internal tuner can't do I have a jumper going into an
> external tuner. Technically everything is running through that jumper and
> into the tuner but I keep it switched to bypass the tuner when not needed.
> When I do need the tuner I flip it to where it needs to be adjust some
> things and boom I'm on 40, 80 with some work, and 160 with tons of work. It
> works perfectly. Up until these storms. Most of the storms I was able to get
> down to the shack and disconnect the coax even though everything is below
> roof line with plenty of other objects such as water towers for lighting to
> strike. From what I can tell I never took or came remotely close to a direct
> hit even though there was visible strikes no more than 2 miles away. Since
> the radio won't even tune 10 anymore much less any other band could this be
> sign or fried coax and antennas or could it be a failing internal tuner? How
> do I check all this? 2M side of everything seems to work fine and that
> antenna is the tallest one on the mast.
> Thanks!
> Kyle
>
> 73 de KC3FMP - FM19KJ
>
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> 73 de K3PZN Westminster, MD
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