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15 Meters is Open

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Traveling Wave:
!5 Meters has been open from 1430 UTC too 2100 UTC for the last few weeks. Stations in Italy, Belgium,South Africa, Poland, Norway, Germany are the usual phone contacts.

Elf36:
I need to get an antenna set-up for 15M. For some reason my FT-950 will not tune 15 or 30 meters anymore, using an 135' OCF dipole. I really miss having those bands. Especially since 15M is getting better and better.

RobRich:
The FT-950 is okay for up to ~3:1 SWR into a purely resistive load.

Depending upon the balun and exact feedpoint, your 135' OCF is probably around 3.5:1 to 5:1 on 15m, while 30m could be twice or more that. If the internal tuner was tuning previously either band, I would suspect (up to considerable) losses in the balun and/or feedline masking the mismatch.

You are looking at an outboard tuner for those bands with your OCF, or maybe an autotuner "extender" like the MFJ-914 if you want to ballpark a match workable with the radio's internal tuner.

With room for such a large horizontal dipole, you might would fair better with a doublet and balanced feed line, though you would need an outboard tuner there as well.

RobRich:
BTW, thought about a vertical wire for chasing 15m DX? An end-fed halfwave dipole would be about 24.6'. Use a 49:1 or 64:1 transformer at the base. The RF ground side, which is going to carry almost no current on an EFHW vertical, could be like just four 6'-12' on-ground radials.

You could add a second half-wavelength wire as a vertical or inverted-L for 30m, too. Basically a fan vertical.

Elf36:
Yes. I checked the transformer for any water intrusion and replaced the coax with a brand new RG-213. I do have a have an LDG Auto tuner I could hook up and try out.

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