My 30 years old HY-GAIN TR3-MK3s Thunderbird TRIBANDER need a full renovation                                                                   OKT. 2013

Just for remembering the hard work, I think never will be necessary to do again in my lifetime!

I have bin the lucky owner of this very OLD and NO MORE supported antenna from HY-GAIN, for about 7 years, and I have never done anything to it before now.

A HAM-friend had to move to another part of Denmark, and did not have "room for a pony" on the truck for the travel, so he sold this fine quality antenna to me, together
with an OLD, but fine HY-GAIN TAILTWISTER ROTATOR, renovated NOT long ago.

The antenna have failed to stay in resonance on almost every 3 band, 10, 15 and 20 meter, for some month now, and I would like to get my OLD antenna back, the antenna that
easily worked the US west coast with 10 watt CW on 20 meter, with NO PROBLEM.

For long time, I had wishes to take the antenna down for renovating, but the time went by. BUT NOW....

My little garden-tower is 9,5 meter high, and is mounted on a "TURN OVER" arrangement, so it is easy to lay down, (look here...),
so 10 minutes after the desertion was taken, all the elements was unmounted and taken to my workshop and the first 2 dismounted.

Very soon after this dismounting, it was clear to me, that all the compression Clamps had to go on pension.
A trip to a local hardware store, spending about $ 100 to new CLAMPS.

DAY ONE:
After the unmounting, I took the 4 traps to my LAB. for controlling on my DQ8SAQ VNWA, and there was NO PROBLEM with them.
Se my measuring on the here...

The first two elements I now polished and remounted, with new clamps, as you se at the picture LEFT.

WITCH TWO, DO YOU THINK ?

I used FINE grained sandpaper ( 180 ) to polish the element, and it was only HARD WORK, but after some hours, the first two parts, the DIRECTORS, was fine polished and re-mounted, just after the book.

I was very careful with the measuring, controlled everything two times, some of it more than two times, just to be sure, and luckily, the MANUAL also have the measuring in EU- meter/centimeter/millimeter.

DAY TWO:
As I said earlier, it is a hard job to polish all these element, so I did not try to polish the TRAPS.

This day goes by, polishing and polishing the rest of these, in total 6 elements, and measuring traps on them to.

Then the remounting with new clamps.

DAY TREE:
I started this day by un-mounting the BETA MATCH, and here I found one of the serious fail-problem.

The middle of the BETA MATCH is grounded to the BOOM, and this ground was corroded so much, as it fall apart under the dismounting. Who could expect anything else then some where on the antenna, there must be a problem, and here I think I found my problem.

The ground point was renovated, new bolts and nuts mounted, the BETA MATCH got polished, and remounted on the BOOM.

I had to polish the inner most part of the 6 elements, still mounted on the BOOM, as the picture you se here at left, only is a part of the total elements, so more polishing...

Now I came to the mounting-point of the antenna and cable. I use 26 meter RG213, 50 Ohm cable down to my Shack, and earlier I have used a HY-GAIN BALUN, rated for 1 K power. A measuring of this BALUN was NOT conclusive, so it went to scrap.

In my workshop I found a PVC-vindel, diameter 11 cm, and took a pice of RG213, 6 meter, and wound it on this PVC-vindel 15 turn. Measured it to be a very fine current-BALUN, good for more than a SPE EXPERT 1K-FA, and mounted it in the feeding-point and connected it to my RG213, down to the Shack.

New bolts and nuts in the feeding point was also necessary.

 

NOW the time comes for measuring the quality of my work...

 

Just go on....

Measuring the antenna performing.

DG8SAQ, Tom have done a marvels job with his VNWA software. This is the best investment I ever have done for measuring on anything. Learning to use it is coming by interest, and as I am only AUTODIDACT on electronic, it has taken me some time to get the fundamental things about something called S11, S12, S21 and S22, but I know, that I have to use S11 to measure on the antenna.

All measuring hereunder is done by this fine instrument, I have had since the spring of 2010, an d done in my shack.

Starting with CALIBRATING OUT the cable, so the result is ONLY the BALUN and the antenna.

I have made the antenna so the best MATCH should be in the CW-area (LOW END) of the bands

This is my first measuring.

The ONLY BAND perfect match is the 15 meter band.

Both the 10 and 20 meter band is to LOW in frequency, so I will start trying to tune this.

I am a little confused about the resonant (marker 4) at 11.81 MHz, as I do not understand how this could be...???  The BALUN ??

BUT...
In all, I am satisfied with the fine SWR from 1.2:1 in the best...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I would take a closer look:

20 Meter Band:

It is TO LOW, so I have to move the resonant UP in frequency.

The explanation for this better RETURNLOSS at -53 db is, that I use 2000 point of sweeping, and here I ZOOM in on a specific part of total, gives me a more precise point of measuring. ( I think ). Maybe there is a problem with this band. 

The BLUE line is S-11 RETURNLOSS, and

the RED line is VSWR

For me, it looks promising.

15 meter band:

THIS IS PERFECT for me!!!!

I work CW and DIGI-mode mostly, so I like this measuring.

NO JUMPS, so very stabile measuring.

RETURNLOSS better than -32 db

10 meter band:

It is TO LOW, so I have to move the resonant UP in frequency.

Maybe shortening the elements in the ends will do the trick, we must se...

Signal is STABILE with NO JUMPS...

AND the SWR is FINE OK..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SMITH-CARD and the resonance-points:

Resonance-point is pretty close to center, 50 Ohm.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MORE to COME...