High SWR, Testing and fixing

I wanted to start working some HF stations, but found that my tuner (LDG AT-200Pro See http://www.ldgelectronics.com/c/252/products/17/3/1) was incapable of resolving the high SWR that I was getting back from my 1/2 size G5RV, So today I set about testing the system to find out where the fault was.

First I connected an SWR meter (separate from the LDG tuner) and tested directly from the radio into a known 50ohm dummy load. See http://www.mfjenterprises.com/Product.php?productid=MFJ-864 and http://www.mfjenterprises.com/Product.php?productid=MFJ-260C for product details.

This allowed a full 100W to be run into the dummy load and showed no SWR at all, i.e. a full 1:1 result.

Next I tested the feed line that went out to the antenna, by moving the dummy load to the connection for the antenna. Here I had high SWR, as in most of the power going out was coming back down the line, suggesting a fault in the feed line. I suspected this as an issue as water seems to get into the PL259 connectors and then into the wire itself.

I replaced the feed line with some spare cable, tested the cable first, then installed the cablefrom inside the house, and out to the antenna.

Then I tested the whoel antenna and feed line with the LDG tuner and now the whole system tunes up nicely and provides me less than 1.1:1 SWR on 14MHz and 7MHz bands.

This is good as I did not need to deinstall and then fix and then reinstall the G5RV antenna.