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Speaking of antenna placement and tuning, several years ago I spent the better part of two days mounting and tuning an 80m mobile antenna along with bonding body panels etc. I finally had the antenna tuned nicely for the 80m DX window at 3780-3800 which was nearly all the allowable bandwidth of that particular antenna. I was feeling good about it and was looking forward to trying it out later that night. The wife was working that night and I had planned to play a little bit after the band improved that evening. After she left for work I went out and checked the band. It seemed as if it was starting to open up good. I keyed up the FT-857 on 3795 and saw the high SWR indicator flashing. WTF?? It was fine a short while ago. In fact it was GREAT. I was POed at this point and got my antenna analyzer and started to check out a few things. The resonant point was way off from what I had it set at initially. After a little head scratching it suddenly hit me what happened. The wife's vehicle was no longer parked next to mine. :headbangThe other half of a huge capacitor was no longer there. No mobile 80m playtime that evening. I had to retune the antenna the following day and that time I did it away from her vehicle.

<blockquote data-quote="Captain Kilowatt" data-source="post: 455269" data-attributes="member: 39"><p>Speaking of antenna placement and tuning, several years ago I spent the better part of two days mounting and tuning an 80m mobile antenna along with bonding body panels etc. I finally had the antenna tuned nicely for the 80m DX window at 3780-3800 which was nearly all the allowable bandwidth of that particular antenna. I was feeling good about it and was looking forward to trying it out later that night. The wife was working that night and I had planned to play a little bit after the band improved that evening. After she left for work I went out and checked the band. It seemed as if it was starting to open up good. I keyed up the FT-857 on 3795 and saw the high SWR indicator flashing. WTF?? It was fine a short while ago. In fact it was GREAT. I was POed at this point and got my antenna analyzer and started to check out a few things. The resonant point was way off from what I had it set at initially. After a little head scratching it suddenly hit me what happened. The wife&#039;s vehicle was no longer parked next to mine. :headbangThe other half of a huge capacitor was no longer there. No mobile 80m playtime that evening. I had to retune the antenna the following day and that time I did it away from her vehicle.</p></blockquote><p></p>

[QUOTE="Captain Kilowatt, post: 455269, member: 39"] Speaking of antenna placement and tuning, several years ago I spent the better part of two days mounting and tuning an 80m mobile antenna along with bonding body panels etc. I finally had the antenna tuned nicely for the 80m DX window at 3780-3800 which was nearly all the allowable bandwidth of that particular antenna. I was feeling good about it and was looking forward to trying it out later that night. The wife was working that night and I had planned to play a little bit after the band improved that evening. After she left for work I went out and checked the band. It seemed as if it was starting to open up good. I keyed up the FT-857 on 3795 and saw the high SWR indicator flashing. WTF?? It was fine a short while ago. In fact it was GREAT. I was POed at this point and got my antenna analyzer and started to check out a few things. The resonant point was way off from what I had it set at initially. After a little head scratching it suddenly hit me what happened. The wife's vehicle was no longer parked next to mine. :headbangThe other half of a huge capacitor was no longer there. No mobile 80m playtime that evening. I had to retune the antenna the following day and that time I did it away from her vehicle. [/QUOTE]

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