Turn on 75 Meter phone on any evening and break into the little groups that form up & down the band. They won't be as kind as the guy that you had the QSO with in Canada. For this reason I don't even have an antenna that covers down to the 75/80 meter bands. Unless you are part of their little clicks, don't even bother. They will curse you out like an Alcatraz inmate.

How would I benifet better if I used a balun or balanced feed line, or just forget the balun all together and just use straight coax to the elements?  I do have a really good Palstar tuner with a built in balun for open feed line. I could use this if I needed to. What would be the best configuration? Remember I want to eliminate that pesky RFI that is currently ripping me apart, and get more of my radiated signal out into the atmosphere, and not my TV, or microphone, or telephone...

After tearing what little hair I have left out, I finally figured out that the cause of 99.9% of my RFI issues was the Radio Works Carolina Windom itself. I hooked up my Hustler 5BTV today and fired it up with the same amp and radio that I use on my windom. The RFI is non-existent. With the windom, I get ripped appart by RFI especially on 20-15 meters. I have spent quite a bit if time messing with RF grounds, line isolators, coax chokes... with no success. After speaking with the folks at Radio Works, the fellow was not surprised about the RFI. All he could recommend is that I place the antenna as far away from my house as possible. Well the Hustler vertical is no further away from the house than the windom, and the problem is not present with the Hustler, even when I pump 1200 watts into the Hustler. Forget putting anymore than 200 Watts into the windom. I am looking for something that covers 40-10 meters including the WARC bands. I do have a good tuner that can handle balanced & unbalanced feed lines. I like to have 2 different types of antennas for HF at the same time. That's why I put up the vertical after I having put up the windom. Oh yea, did I mention  that I have an amp that is capable of 2kw? I would like to use this amp too. I find that most commercially made wire antennas cannot handle 2KW. I am am also very limitted in space so I have about 70' to put up a wire antenna. That is why I had chosen the Carolina Windom 40, which is only 66' long.

Yesterday I posted a question about an RFI issue that I was having in the shack. Thanx to many of your responses I have been able to reduce the problem. It's not completely gone, but I believe I am on the right track. The second part of my question is, now that I have all my HF gear properly grounded, what do I do with my VHF/UHF gear? I have heavy braid coming from each piece of HF gear to a copper buss bar mounted under the bench and the main braid from the buss goes to a Ten Tec counterpoise tuner and then out to the outside and connected to 6 ground rods that are buried in the ground in a star configuration. I have also grounded the braid of the coax that goes to my HF antenna. All of the gear goes through the Ten Tec 1251 counterpoise tuner since I did have to run a long piece of briad from the rods to the tuner because my shack is on the 2nd floor. All the braid is 1/2" braid. I didn't skimp on this. My next question is should I also connect my VHF/UHF and 220MHz rigs to this same ground system? I don't see how they would benefit since the tuner really dosen't seem to do much for any frequencies above 21MHz. Should I run a seperate ground for these or just leave them ungrounded? Something in me tells me that I should have some kind of ground system for these rigs, but I am lost as to what it should be. I am not having any issues with the 2m/440 rig, but the 220 rig does go crazy when I run power on 20-15 meters. I have to shut it off when I get on these bands.  Thanx again guys for all your help.

So far what has worked the best is WB6BYU's suggestion to use a lightening arrestor to ground the braid to my ground point. I am now able to bring the power up to about 1100 watts without getting the raspy audio on my signal. The 220 rig is still going nuts though

So far what has worked the best is WB6BYU's suggestion to use a lightening arrestor to ground the braid to my ground point. I am now able to bring the power up to about 1100 watts without getting the raspy audio on my signal.

I am using a Radioworks Carolins Windom 40, as stated in my original post. see: http://radioworks.com for details on this antenna. Basically it's an OCF dipole with a vertical radiator.

I do have my ground running outside to 6 ground rods  burried in the ground and I am running 1/2" braid in a star configuradion. This runs to the counterpoise tuner and then to the radio gear.

I have a 2nd floor shack that I have run a pretty extensive RF ground and I am using a TEN TEC counterpoise tuner to maximize the effect of the ground at different freuencies. The initial problem was that I am suffering from RFI especially when I kick the amp in and reach the 1KW mark. I have an Icom 746 Pro with an Alpha 76A amp, and a Palstar 1500CV tuner. On 20 & 17 Meters I get RF bites with the amp on if my lip accidently touches the mic while I am transmitting. (OUCH!) On these bands it also causes my 220 rig to go crazy when I am transmitting. On 40 meters I have to really turn the power down because my audio sounds very raspy on the other end and I am being told that I have stray RF in my audio. I also hear my very distorted audio coming from my speaker in the shack.  The grounding did help, but did not completely eliminate the problem. I would appreciete any other suggestions to cure the issue. I was thinking of coiling the coax at the transmitter end and at the antenna end. I was told that 10 turns about 6" in diameter should choke out the coax from radiating. Oh yea one minor detail... The antenna that I am using is the Radio Works Carolina Windom 40.

Their poor customer service is only surpassed by the poor quality of their products. I am happy to say that I do not have ANY MFJ equipment in my shack any longer. I am MFJ, Ameritron, Vectronics, Mirage, Hygain FREE!!!. Don't let them fool you. They are all the same company under different names. Look at their addresses. Their so called 3KW tuner almost cost me an Alpha amp.

The antenna is vertically polarized. Unfortunatly because of the lenght of the boom, it attaches to the mast right in the middle of the boom. But I tuned it this way. I had it on a metal boom on the ground when I tuned it.

I assembled a Cushcraft 10 element beam and had it mounted 4' off the ground while I tuned it. There were no obstructions around and the SWR was 1.3:1 at 145.52MHz. This was great. I put it up on the mast on the roof and the resonant frequency dropped 5MHz. Now the SWR is flat down at 141.5MHz and at 146.52 it shot up to almost 3:1. The other pecular problem, is that even where it is resonant,  I talked to some stations that with a 1/2 wave vertical I used to give an S7 signal, with this thing I am only giving them an S2. So the problem is 2 fold. 1) the SWR shot up where it should not have. 2) Even with the antenna pointed at certain stations, the signal it is putting out is very very reduced compared to a simple 1/2 wave vertical. The only other thing close to this antenna is that I have a 11 element 440 beam about 3' above this one.

I will be going back up on the roof this weekend. What should I be looking for other than the obvious, retuning, loose connector...

Does anybody know how to calibrate one of these rotors? It is the $59.00 type that Lowes & radio shack sold a while back. I set mine correctly before I put it up now after turning it a few times it is out of whack. When the indicator on the box points north the antennas are pointed NE. If I play with it for a bit, and then go back an point it north again, the antenas may be pointed NW. I don't see how this can be calibrated at all. It may just be a throw away and buy a new one.

Suggestions??

Check out deoxit by ciag labs. It is awsome stuff. Go here: http://www.caig.com/

I have an ADI 247 for 220 it is a 30 watt FM rig that works very well. It sells new from HRO for about $200.00. I use it with an omidirectional antenna. The Hustler G7-220. We do have a bit of activity on 220 here because of the efforts of a few hams. I bought a 2nd one for the car because this rig works so well and is very simple to operate. I have also found out that any mic that is wired for a 8 pin Kenwood rig works just fine on this rig without rewiring. I am using the base unit with a kenwood MC-85 base mic.
For SSB we have found that the only time we hear any stations is when the big guns bring out their gear to play during a contest. Other than that you can call CQ until you turn blue with no success.

For 1296, make sure that there IS activity in your area. It is very line of sight specific. We have a few guys here that spent mega bucks on high gain antennas and amplifiers and found that they are only able to talk to each other. They have even gone mountain topping  with the 1296 and have found it to be very dissapointing. So far they have only managed to work less than 10 other stations in this band. For a rig what they have is the Icom IC-910H with the 1296 add on. By the time you are through with the radio alone, it is already at the $2000.00 mark and at this point you only have a 10 watt rig for 1296. Oh also definetly buy a good preamp! Icom makes one for this rig or you can buy a 3rd party unit. I'm sure that you can find a used one cheaper, but remember make sure that there is activity in your area or you will be very dissapointed.

Val,

Are you familiar wit an IC-910? The cost of the 910 alone is probably as much at the 3 rigs that you mentioned put together. That's  why it is a sad deal that this rig does not come with this feature and a rig that costs 1/3 the price does.  I did find a mod from icom. I had to have a dealer call Icom tech support and they were kind enough to email it to us. I just don't believe that a rig that is supposed to be so sophisticated does not do this simple function right out of the box. Especially when it was designed to be a satellite rig to begin with.