Thanks for everyone's advice. Sorry about title SQR versus SWR which stands for Structured Query Language from Peoplesoft which I use alot.

As it turns out my antenna is up 30 feet not 40 feet, ends at 15 feet, and this last weekend we had rain on top of snow and then ice which, of course, drove the SWR up to nearly 3.0 to 1 at the center frequencies on both 160 and 80 meters. It appears to be OK on 40 which again confirms the height as being the possible problem. Much of the rain and snow has partially washed away and dried up and the temperature is now close to 0 and as expected the SWR is also much improved at about 2:1. I guess I cannot complain since I was able to work several caribean DX stations on 160 meters over the weekend with the antenna and a tuner.
The antenna was built from a 1992 QST article. Here is the link to the article on ARRL web site by W8NX.

http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/pdf/9207035.pdf

I recently built a 4 trap multi - band 40, 80 and 160 meter dipole from a 1992 QST article. It has performed very well.

I have it stretched horizontally between my tower and a large tree at about 40 feet up. Then just past the 80 meter coils, due to my lot size, I drop the ends almost straight down to the ground. Each end is about 12 feet off the ground.

It performs fairly well. My SWR on 40 is almost 1:1 across the band. On 80 meters it as the articles said it would be at about 1.3 to 1 for about 75KHZ.

However on 160 meters, the SWR ranges between 1.5 to 1 and 2.5 to 1 without a tuner at the center tuned frequency.

Here is my question. Would this be due to the close proximity of one end to the tree, or the dropping of the ends of the dipole almost vertically to the ground?

One strange phenomenon is that when the temperature drops to a very cold level here in NH, e.g. zero to 10 degrees F, then the SQR also drops. Would this be the sap in the tree freezing and resulting in less conductivity?

I am intereted in anyones ideas and thoughts. If possible, I would like to get consistently closer to 1:1 on 160 meters without the tuner.

P.S. I am using a 1:1 balun.

Thanks.

Does anyone know the complete Hexadecimal command to control XMIT/RCV or the PTT switch on the MFJ-1275 sound card radio interface to open for audio thru an RS232 port? I am using TRX-Manager with TRX-Command and all I need is the Hex Command line. Last obstacle to operate RCOL.

Does anyone know the complete Hexadecimal command to control XMIT/RCVE or PTT switch on the MFJ-1275 sound card radio interface to open for audio? I am using TRX-Manager with TRX-Command and all I need is the Hex Command line. Last obstacle to operate RCOL.

Have you constructed the 2 ele beam and if so how did it work. I am looking at doing the same.