[TVARC] K4QR’s Station Temporarily Off-the-Air Due to Buried Coax Failure

[Anthony Wayne Hackenberg]

Hi Members of TVARC’s MailList,

My (K4QR) amateur radio station is temporarily off-the-air (OTA) and will be for some time.  Recently, while working a Parks-on-the-Air (POTA) station, my SWR suddenly skyrocketed and then my output power plummeted to nothing.

After a couple of debugging sessions, I’ve determined the culprit. The underground coax line (buried in electrical grey conduit) has failed for some reason.  Since this coax run used high quality, “Davis”, direct-bury, coax, it’s still a wee bit of a mystery as to why it failed.

So, I’ll be off the airwaves until I can get a temporary workaround installed to bypass that culprit (failed coax run).  It will probably be a window feed-thru run of coax bypassing the problem.

Has anybody else experienced a failure with their buried (enclosed in conduit) coax runs to their (flagpole) antennas?  My failed coax run was only about eight (8) years old; but, maybe Florida’s environment is harder on coax.


73,

Tony
Callsign: K4QR
Sent from my iPad