Hi, all.

Well, I tried the G5RV out at the RV over the week-end, and alas, no joy.  I 
have some theories about what the problem was, which I'll get to shortly.

First, the good news:  The camp site manager had absolutely no problem with 
my putting up the antenna, and in fact helped with our initial installation. 
So, at least I know I'm good to go if I want to try something else out 
there.

Since the guy was nice enough to help with the installation, I decided to go 
ahead with his initial suggestion of putting the center on top of his RV, 
which is about 50 feet from ours, and much higher than ours.  The legs of 
the antenna then went across his roof on each side to adjacent trees.  He 
did wrap one part of one leg  around the railing of his RV ladder to keep 
things in place.  The ladder line then came down from the center of the 
antenna on about a 45 degree angle to the PL259feed point connection on my 
RV.  I'd say the center of the antenna was up about 30 feet, with the legs 
up about 15 to 20 feet on adjacent trees.

Overall, my SWR's must not have been good, because the only band I could get 
the TS480 auto-tuner to tune it on was 10 meters.  Everything else gave me 
the SWR no-tune reading.

As for what might have gone wrong, I eliminated a number of possibilities:

1.  I checked my feed line on the RV, and all other jumper connections, for 
electrical integrity, and they were fine.  I then physically checked the 
connections on the G5RV itself, and they  looked fine.  I had my XYL confirm 
this visually as well.

As for what could have gone wrong, then, my theory is that perhaps the roof 
on the manager's RV was metal, or had metal in it, which served to de-tune 
the antenna.  Wrapping one leg around the RV railing for a turn or two also 
might have thrown things off.

Finally, I did one thing in the way of continuity checking that I want to be 
sure of with you G5RV experts out there.  When you do a continuity check of 
the G5RV on the PL259 end, is it correct that you get electrical continuity 
across the coax connector?  In other words, when I took my continuity 
checker, put one lead on the center conductor, and the other on the outer 
shield of the connector, I got continuity.  I assume this indicates that I 
have an electrically complete antenna.  Please correct me if I'm wrong on 
this.

All in all, it was a rather disappointing situation, but if we can get out 
to the RV next week-end, we'll try something else, perhaps in nearby trees 
if we can figure out a way to get the center up at a reasonable height.

73 from Tom Behler: KB8TYJ