I've worked ham swap meets also and the earlier, the better.

One reason is many of the venues require hours to clean-up after the event is over, and even when the "official ending time" occurs, all the vendors and many buyers are still on site.  It can take 30-60 mins for all the visitors to finally leave, and then the vendors can start packing up and clearing out.  And after all that, whoever owns the site often wants to clean it of all litter.

All that can take 3-4 hours.  If the event lasted until 6 PM, many wouldn't get to leave until 9 or 10 PM, and part of the clean-up might be after dark.

I think the feeling of most vendors (sellers) is, "If somebody can't show up at 6 or 7 AM, they're not that interested and I really don't care."

The center conductor is already DC grounded. 


I disagree the best protection is to disconnect anything.  The best protection is to have a good earth ground on the antenna mast, which in turn also completely grounds the entire antenna, and then install the arrestor at the cable entry point to the house via a grounded panel which is connected with a heavy gauge conductor to both the antenna ground rod and the AC mains service panel ground (unless those are already the same point, which is a great idea).  Then, there's no reason to disconnect anything.  Radio and television stations, cell sites, and all other commercial installations never disconnect anything and get hit by lightning all the time.

Check out AADE.  Their stuff is incredible, reasonably priced, and currently available.

It might.  But the G5RV Jr. on some bands will be much worse than that.   Most good "manual" T-match tuners will handle 10:1 or worse with not too much loss, especially if they have a big, heavy coil for the shunt inductor.

My ATR-30 can load up a clip lead on 80m without much tuner loss.

The HL-45B is a very good amp, but not 100W, I guess it's really about 45-50W.

I had one in the motor home for use with an FT-817 for years and it never failed.

Good luck!

(BTW the Ten Tec amp isn't a bad deal: It's more power than the THP amp and has some additional features, for not a lot more money.  However, I don't have one so can't comment on how well it works.)

Sure, why not?

Although I do have beams for 20m and above that, I use my 6BTV on 30m often, and 40m about half the time (I have an inverted vee at 55' for the other half the time), and even "sometimes" on 80m (CW only, I tuned it for 3525).

Using 100W I've worked all over the world with it for years.

A lot of the "secret" is how good a radial system you have, of course.

I find the 6BTV to be a "killer" antenna on 40, it is as good as my 55' high full-sized inverted vee quite often, and sometimes better than that.  Worked Mali on 40m CW from here in CA a few days ago.

The Ringo Ranger ARX-2B is a DC grounded antenna to begin with.  The whole antenna has direct connection to its mounting/supporting mast, so if you ground that, you've grounded "everything."

If you use an arrestor at all, it should be at the cable entry point to the house, and nowhere else.  Anywhere else doesn't even make sense.

PAR sells a very effective 152 MHz pager notch filter with BNC connectors on it for external use.  It is extremely effective.  See here: http://www.parelectronics.com/amateur.php

It's not expensive and works a lot better than what most could homebrew.  I have about five of these, accumulated over the years.

That's difficult.

Do you have a VHF scanner?  If so, you could let it free-scan throughout the whole VHF spectrum and note how strong signals are when it stops on an active channel. 

If you find one that's much stronger than the others, you may have your answer.

If you read Eric KL7AJ's article on ionospheric propagation and the way the ionosphere frequently tilts (March 2012 issue of QST) that may help explain some of what you're seeing.

Eric works in the field of ionospheric study and science and has published some very interesting stuff over the past few years.  In that particular article, he explains why there really can be such a thing as "one way propagation" on HF (ionospheric propagation), and also why the best beam heading for transmitting isn't always the best heading for receiving, when working the same station.

I didn't see an antenna tuner in that setup description.

The auto tuner in the TS-570 is better than nothing, but won't cover serious mismatches.

If you improve the coax to RG-213/U, the mismatch seen by the rig will be worse (higher level of mismatch) than you have now with the RG8X because the cable loss will be lower.  I suspect you'll find you need an external tuner either now or eventually.

Of course, elevating the antenna to make it higher above ground, or doubling its size to a "full sized" G5RV (102' long) will also help you work more stuff.  The longer G5RV also covers 80 meters, which the G5RV Jr. won't.  An increase in height from 25' to 50' will greatly improve what you can hear and contact on 20m and 40m; may not make any difference on the higher bands.

You can do what you want, but RG58 coax is extremely lossy on 70cm (440 MHz) and unless your run is very, very short (like less than ten feet), you'd lose an awful lot of signal in the coax.

For any more realistic cable length (20 feet or more) I'd go with at least RG-213/U or something better than that, like LMR400.

A good screwdriver installed well could do this job for you; however it will need radials to work and a 15' pipe doesn't make any kind of radial system.

Can you run thin (light gauge) wires up overhead, spread around at 15' above ground, to create a ground plane for the screwdriver?  Another alternative is to use the camper roof as a partial ground plane system, if it's aluminum.  Obviously, if it's fibreglas or something non-conductive that won't work; but even if it's non-conductive, you could possibly just hot-glue or epoxy (or tape!) some copper wire radials to the roof of the camper and connect those to the mounting point of the screwdriver.  Not ideal, but a lot better than nothing.

That kind of solution may not work well on 80m, but has a good chance on 40m and higher frequencies.

Another possibility is this one, kind of tailored for your application: http://www.tentec.com/products/Model-418--160%252d6-Meter-Solid-State-Linear-Amplifier.html

How's it mounted?

Also, it always pays to test SWR at a number of frequencies, not just one.

What is it at 144.1?  145.0?  146.0?  147.0?  147.9?  This would help reveal if there's a serious problem or it's just mistuned for the new environment and the antenna needs tuning.  (Normally, they can be tuned slightly by adjusting the length of the radiator whip.)

Could also be a bad NMO coil at the base -- they can be damaged, and they do go bad sometimes (usually due to mechanical shock).

Actually what you're measuring isn't far off.

The T11 has a "typical max SWR of 1.8" but that's not guaranteed, and most of your readings are below that.

I don't have a T11 but do have a T8 and also had a T6 and noted the coax positioning is pretty critical.  Tennadyne in their original instructions (mine was made in Texas, part of the "original" Tennadyne line) recommended tying the coax to the lower boom and running it along the lower boom from the feedpoint back to the center bracket.

I tried that, and SWR was bouncy, and there was common mode current coming back down the shield.  So, I rearranged the coax routing based on what I'd seen in many military and commercial LPDA applications, where they let the coax "droop" from the feedpoint down to several feet below the antenna, only pulling it back up towards the antenna at the center bracket where it then forms a loop to go down the tower or mast.

Common mode issues went away, and SWR was flatter: So, I left it that way, forever.