The most accurate watch I  ever had was from Godfathers Pizza as a promotion about 20 years ago.  It keep almost perfectly accurate time until the battery wore out about 2 years later!  Never was the same after I replaced the battery.  Talk about a cheap,plastic watch!  Even the band was cheap, but, man, was it accurate!

I personally don't shop at AES/HRO but I do shop at Associated Radio in Kansas City, Kansas.  If they have what I want, I buy it from them.  That pretty much sums it up.  Any problems at all and they have fixed it or helped me to do so.  I can talk to live people at any time during the day and get there in-person myself in about an hour.  That is worth a lot to me.  I also like the fact that I can pick up equipment, twiddle with it , and than ask all the questions I want to sales people (all hams) who KNOW what they are talking about.  Sales tax is (unfortunately) almost unavoidable.  It won't be long before you WILL be taxed on any outside of your state purchases as everything is getting inter-connected.  To wrap it up, personal service is more important than final price to me.  I have not seen that final prices on expensive pieces of equipment vary that much: maybe a few percent at best.  If we don't support local ham shops, no one will!

The ladder line was running out at about a 45 degree angle from the other feedline which came straight down the support.  I did try retuning regularly (especially after the problem became more frequent) but that didn't seem to help.  The G5RV was brand new.  I will be trying my IC746 out on my dipole at home but it had not had any problems that I noticed before the contest.

I do agree about the statement using the  external tuner.  I was afraid it might be an issue.  Apparently it was.  Sure made for a frustrating contest and I was only three away from a sweep!

This weekend for the Sweeps, we used a G5RV antenna strung between three poles.  Center was up 30' and ends up 20'.  The ladder line was strung out at an angle from the center support to a cedar tree with the end of the ladder line only about four feet off the ground.  There was a 40/80 dipole running perpendicular to the G5RV using the same center support pole.  We operated in a trailer with the operating position about 30' feet from the ladder line.  We had definite issues with SWR readings during the entire contest.  However, things really got bad once the wind started blowing.  My radio, IC746, kept shutting down to protect itself from high SWR readings.  This started occurring on almost every other QSO.  I eventually shut down entirely to prevent doing damage to my radio.  We have done this same set up with crossed dipoles previously with no problems. We DO NOT transmit on both at the same time and did not do so with the G5RV this time.  Any suggestions as to what was going on?  I am pretty sure we were getting feed back through the system as I could hear myself in headphones when transmitting.  I know that the ladder line the G5RV is part of the antenna.  Have other people had this problem with the G5RV or is the antenna tuner on my radio going bad?