Howdy DXers,

I arrived back in town this week and found myself behind on everything.  One thing that I knew we should do, is get our club station working again on the upper bands.  I wanted to work FT8WW for the club before he leaves Crozet. 

With the help ,of Rich WB4EHG, we quickly put a team together to correct the problem on the TH-11 at the club station.  The team consisted of Rich WB4EHG, Rich W4RQ, Marty KQ4CKB and myself.  We arrived at the hospital around 10:00 AM Saturday morning.  I don't know how I made it!  I went to bed early (for me!) around 12 midnight. I had a young kid screaming, at the top of his lungs that woke me up at 2:00.  Finally got back to sleep and it started again a 3:20 AM. It was on and off all night and I got about 3 hours of sleep.  I finally got up around 8:30. later than I wanted since I wanted to be there around 9:00.  No time to eat. 

We were there to get a job done. After a brief planning session and a bottle of water, up the tower I went. We had suspected the problem was the connector at the balun. It looked really bad when I removed it.  It appeared the the center conductor had never been soldered.  I replaced it and plugged the new connector into the dummy load.  I just knew that it had to be the problem.  When the team keyed the rig... the SWR was still terrible!  ugh! 

With the help of the Rich and Rich team, they did some time domain research on the cable and it appeared to be shorted about 3/4 of the way to the antenna. Back outside I found a barrel connector joint that appeared to be very well sealed from the weather.  I started stripping the coax seal and tape and as soon as I removed the tape it smelled burnt.  The barrel and one of the connectors was welded together.  Thank goodness I brought some barrel connectors and PL-259's.  I put a new PL-259 on the cable end and inserted a new barrel.  We plugged it into the dummy load and thank goodness all was GOOD! Back up the tower I went and plugged it into the antenna for a final test.  All was good!  After about an hour of dressing the cables, the work was finally done around 3:00 PM.  We all decided to head home. 

The bottom line is that the TH-11 is healthy and working just fine now after being intermittent for 2 years.

I appreciate the teams help in getting this done. 

I'm tired and going to bed.  I will send out episode 2 and the meeting invite in the morning!

Very 73,
Randy N4QV