Spent two years installing antennas wrong until a senior tech pointed it out

I was torquing my VHF antennas to the spec in the manual but getting weird SWR readings. Turns out I was using a metal washer instead of a locking washer and it was grounding out the center pin. Has anyone else had a tiny hardware mistake cause big problems?

2 comments

2 Comments

noah4155d ago

Changed my mind on torque specs too. Used to think cranking things down as hard as possible was better. Then had a PL259 connector where I overtightened it and cracked the dielectric inside. SWR jumped from 1.1 to 1.6 after a few weeks of vibration. Now I actually follow the spec with a proper torque wrench for anything critical. That washer thing you mentioned is a classic gotcha though.

the_jesse4d ago

Funny you mention that @noah415, cause I once spent a whole weekend chasing a ghost SWR on a repeater setup, turned out I had the ground strap bolted onto a painted bracket and that little bit of paint was killing me. Torque specs are great and all, but sometimes it's the dumb stuff like paint or a washer that really gets ya.