Seems like it took quite a small amount of turns! I'm wondering what kind of effect all the extra wire in the coil is having and whether it would be a good idea to make another with only about 7 turns or if I should just leave as it is now. I got it to tune quite nicely at the 4th turn and got it down from an SWR of about 1.8:1 to 1.2:1. Instead I used a 2.2cm former (0.86 inches) and I just went ahead and gave it 20 turns of telephone wire with a tap on every other turn. I had to sort of "Shot gun" the coil because I didnt have any 2 inch formers (PVC). I built the tuner, right now I have it wired point to point just testing it out. I think the antenna might actually be long because when I go to channel one the SWR drops a tiny bit from what it was on channel 40. Could anyone give me a rough idea as to the diameter of former, wire turns, etc it would take to get something around that value? The problem is the inductor, don't have anything of that sort available but would like to wind it myself. Would most any tuner meant for HF work here? Usually how wide of a range do antenna tuners cover? Not the same coax or anything in this situation but more or less the same situation.ĭo you guys recommend grounding the mast? IE earth ground? I have some water pipes and construction rebar that would make for a good ground connection, just not sure if its the way to go on something like this. I actually had this exact same situation with the imax, the SWR was so bad I never even got to use it nor was I ever able to tune it. However I find it pretty weird that this is happening. The thing that puts me of is having to take the antenna down and then up again each time I change the length. I would have to take it down and re drill a few extra holes and spend some time experimenting with the length. Height is not adjustable, at least from the factory, it's made of several sections of aluminum tubing with small holes at each end to stick screws in. The antenna is store bought so all the radials and that kind of stuff should be to size. My imax 2000 had a couple of rings near the base that allowed tuning but this one doesn't have anything. I do have some 365pf AM/FM air variables laying around. Even better if there isn't more than one variable capacitor as I have a very limited amount of those. Something simple but effective, the 11 meter band is the only band it will be used with for now. I'm not quite sure which one is the best for my application and I would like to hear your opinion. I looked up the topic but got several suggestions as to what kind of antenna tuner to build. These issues are thing I will be solving but until I get a taller mast and some better coax I would like to build an antenna tuner to at least keep the station somewhat happy. Lots of radio enthusiasts don't seem to have that much of a good opinion on RG-58. The other possible factor is the coax I'm using which is RG-58 with cruddy shielding. The antenna itself has 3 ground plane radials which I was hoping would make it dependent on the size of the mast. The first thing is that the instruction manual that came with the antenna said I need at least 6 meters of mast and I could only scrape together about 5.5 meters. There are a number of factors which may be wrong with the installation. On this antenna I'm getting about 1.8:1 and about 2:1 when output power is peaking on side band. Unfortunately just as the last time I tried installing a commercial antenna, I have much worse SWR than I do with my home made 1/4 wave antenna which is pretty much 1-1 match. I just installed a brand new old stock 5/8 wave antenna for my CB base station.
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