Posts

Showing posts with the label SteppIR vertical

SteppIR vertical problems

I've been using the SteppIR big vertical for about three years with 20 radials under it. It works great, but over the last winter an intermittent problem has shown up. It seems I'm somehow losing connection with the antenna. All of a sudden, the antenna goes deaf and won't tune. I can recalibrate it a few times, and sometimes it comes back. This happened again this week, and for the life of me I can't get it to come back. Last fall i opened the antenna up and did continuity checks, and suddenly it started working again. I guess that's what I'll do tomorrow. I may take some pictures and post here on my progress. So far, I've removed the coax from the antenna and attached it to a dummy load at the antenna base. I get a nice flat SWR reading when I do that, so it's not the coax. I also hook my Yaesu FT-817 directly to the antenna with about a 3 foot run of coax, and get nothing buy high SWR and no signal. So I know the problem is with the antenna. I suspect