For the past several weeks, I have not been able to get on the air. Every time I try to tune in one of the HF bands, I would have really high SWR readings. Seemed to me that it happened when we got our first snowfall, but I know now that the snow had nothing to do with it.
After doing a lot of research on the Internet and asking around the members of my club, no one could figure it out. Then I found a troubleshooting checklist from Firestick (they make CB antennas) that I started working through.
I disconnected the coax from the mount and checked the continuity with an ohm meter. Antenna checked out normal, so I disconnected the coax from the radio and checked to see if I had continuity on the coax. Center conductor was fine, but I had no connection on the shield side. Since my coax consists of a 6-foot jumper from the radio to the connector coming from the mount, I separated the jumper and just checked the one from the mount. No continuity. Scratched a little insulation from the shield at a few places and checked and finally found that the shield was not connected right at the top of the PL-259 connector. Further checking revealed that the shield was completely corroded away from the PL-259 connector. I have it somewhat patched for now, but I will have to order a new cable to go from the mount into the truck.
By the way, I think this is what was causing me to have problems tuning in any band other than 40m during the contest as I can now tune in 80m and 20m just fine now.
Feels good to get the problem solved. Feels even better knowing that I found the problem and fixed it myself. Looks like I will be working some of those high frequencies again in the near future.
73's
