It was my plan all along to use my 80/160m vertical with a tuner for the 2nd “multiplier” radio in my SO2R setup. Once I got my SB1000 amplifier fixed, I fired it up and tried it out with the tuner. It made good power on 40, 20, and 15m, but I realized afterward that I had a high SWR on 80 and 160m.
What happened?
I investigated, and found this:
I melted about 20ft of ladder line in the vertical section of the antenna. Apparently, a high voltage point was created along some point of the vertical on one of these higher bands, causing an arc and melting the ladder line. Back to the drawing board – I will have to come up with some other antenna to use for the 2nd radio before CQWW SSB.