Resolution: Eat more rabbit.
Thanks again for the pointer to the 259B being an answer. I now see
it will do more than I knew, I didn't know about the advanced mode.
So... Last night I disconnected the coax in to the distal coax
switch, it was not connected in the shack but I read a dead short
with the fluke. This morning I went out and disconnected the coax so
I could make a reading on both ends of the coax to see how well they
jived. Found the instigator of the problem & that damned rabbit
chewed mostly through the control cable to the coax switch. He must
have bit into the voltage & that stopped him.
However, he had chewed through the cable and had severed 3-4 wires of
the 6 involved in switching and this disconnected the coax from the
antenna. I was trying for 3B9/OE4AAC on Rodriguez & on 17 & using the
amp. Amazingly the amp didn't have any issue but that energy had to
go somewhere. I reattached the control wires at the switch, went back
to the shack and read 515 feet to fault and that multiplied by the VF
of .66 = 334 feet.
Not knowing the exact footage of the coax, I went to the distal end
and remeasured from there and kept getting different distances but
one thing was for sure, it was easier getting the zero readings at
the shack end. I cut off the connector & there still was a dead short
in the coax so I cut away the roll of coax I used for a choke
thinking it would be found there but no. I started the long grind of
pulling up the coax from under the leaves & snow & came to something
I'd forgotten about, I had run short of coax and needed to use a
female/female jumper to add a length of coax to reach the switch box.
I undid the sealant & could smell the burn. The end going to the
house was undamaged but the other end had fried at the connector. I'd
forgotten that the last part was foam coax & my long run used the
hard plastic dielectric; it was the foam that melted & shorted.
All's well now with the coax and antennas, all read just where they
should and I now have a vial of that Coyote urine under the switch to
deter any more of those wascally wabbits.
Thanks again for the replies.
Gary
KA1J
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