Well sooner or later I guess it had to happen… My homebrewed W3EDP antenna had a failure in last nights heavy wind storm. The tree branches with all the extra weight of the freezing rain were swaying more than ever and the driven element (85 foot long wire) of the W3EDP seperated right at the 4:1 balun.
I went outside and with wire strippers and pliers and re connected everything but now it won’t load up on 80m and 160 m which is consistant with the way that it worked before I swapped out the direct connect for a 4:1 balun so I am thinking that somehow the balun has failed at the same time that the wire seperated from its connections on the balun.
This confuses the HECK out of me as I was not transmitting at the time that it failed but electric components were made to fail and especially with all the rain, freezing rain and extreme cold. It was minus 30 dec C last night with the wind chill here (19 deg C with no wind) perhaps something snapped inside while the balun was being whipped around by the wind before the wire seperated.
Anyway…. its outside for 10min and do as much work as I can before my hands freeze then inside to thaw then outside again… Its slow work…
If I do have to replace the balun I will be off the air till the weekend as the earliest I can get a replacement balun would be Thursday and get it installed hopefully on Friday…
On the brighter side if the antenna had to fail it did it at its lowest point… The 4:1 balun is only 3 feet above ground and very easy to work on. If the wire had failed anywhere else I would really been up that well known creek without a paddle…
This is not a design flaw… The failure is where the driven element of the W3EDP meets up and connects to the commercial balun and also might be with the balun itself…
73bob
Tags: amateur radio, amateur radio antenna, amateur radio equipment, Antenna failure, W3EDP Antenna
December 30, 2009 at 5:27 am |
Could water/ice have gotten into the balun? Maybe bringing it inside and drying it out would help.