I can't HEEEEAAARRRR you!!

I can't hear you!!! One of the great lines delivered by Sgt. Carter on Gomer Pyle. Unfortunately, since reassembling my hex beam antenna, it seems to be the phrase I'm yelling most often at the spotting screen. Those of you who follow my blog probably know that my hex suffered some damage during a rather unusually wet snow fall we had here in North Carolina back in February. You can view some of the damage that happened in one of my earlier postings. However, it looked much worse than it was. The hex rebounded nicely and only one of the spreaders was damaged and had to be repaired. Otherwise, when I put it back together, it was just like putting it together for the first time, everything went together fine.

But there's something different...or so it seems. Darn thing is noisy as heck lately. It's as if my noise level has jumped several S-units. And what I was alluding to by borrowing Sgt. Carter's line was, there are many stations that I feel that I SHOULD be hearing, or that are reported as "599 in NC" on spots that I'm either barely able to hear on the hex, or don't hear at all. Worse, when I switch over to the vertical, sometimes they become a better copy. And, on the dipole, they're often easy copy. Both of those antennas don't have the same noise level either, even the vertical, which surprises me. I don't remember that being the case at all before.

I don't know if something got fouled up in the centerpole or what? It seems to be sealed up tight. All the connections where the individual wires tie into the centerpole seem unaffected from the mishap, no other visible problems. I've swapped out coax, retightened and examined connections and I can't find anything wrong.

I guess my next step is to contact the manufacturer and see what he might have to say. If anyone who reads this has any experience with hex beams, I'd sure welcome any suggestions.

73