Hi Tom,

It was at least I who reported that Carolina Windoms tended to take on water.

I had terrible trouble with two of these things and received denials from the vendor. Words like "no-one else has had any problems" kept being thrown at me. So I gave up.

This was despite extensive efforts to seal the obvious holes in the casing of the balun plus the point where the vertical coax entered the matching unit.

As I recall, after some years, the instructions told you to seal the point of entry for the vertical radiator, though as this was already assembeled, I failed to see why it wasn't properly sealed in the first place.

On Questioning the matter of the holes in the balun, where the feed wires to the individual legs of the antenna exited the housing, I was assured that this didn't matter as the balun was impregnated with sealant anyway, so any water ingress wouldn't affect the antenna.

Well, when I put the first one up, it was fine until we had some rain, then I could only get about 30 Watts up the thing before the VSWR went off the scale!

The second one, I did everything I could to seal all the holes and connectors and it took a bit longer for the water to kill that one!

One problem, I think, is that as the antenna flexed in the wind, it bust the seals around the feed wires. Again, I assert that, if the thing were properly sealed in the first place, this wouldn't have been an issue. We should have only needed to seal the coax feeder at the bottom of the matching unit.

Well, I gave up at this point and made my own doublet.

It was gratifying to hear, some time later, that a famous British amateur, who I won't name, also had this problem, but gave up without reporting it. Hence the "no-one else has had this problem" type of conversation with the vendor.

I have since bought two baluns from this organisation. A couple of friends and I virtually immersed these in Silicon sealant after making the anntennas and connecting the feeders. After some time, water still got into one, via the holes around the feed points to the antenna legs, though the other one has remained intact.

Such has been my experience with these products and I'm not saying anything I haven't reported to the supplier in the past.

It's a shame, because the antennas work fine, so long as you can keep the water out of them. I leave it to others to work out the best way to do that.

Cheers & 73,

Terry, GM3WUX

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Terry Robinson B.Sc
82 Albert Rd.
Crosshill
Glasgow
G42 8DR
Tel: 0141 423 2683 - Mobile: 07771 610002
Web: www.describe-online.com



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