I went back to Marsh Creek State Park (US-1380, KFF-1380) for a quick activation this morning, and things got off to an interesting start. After setting up my trusty Penntek TR-35 (5 watts, CW) and 12-foot loaded whip, things just didn’t seem right. My SWR on 40M was high, and even my Elecraft T1 antenna tuner couldn’t get it lower than 3:1.
I started checking cables and connections, but everything looked OK. Heck, it’s not a very complicated antenna, so there isn’t much that can go wrong. When I got out of the truck to change to another antenna, I noticed my 12-foot whip looked a little shorter than usual. I took the whip off and immediately found the problem. In my haste to get set up this morning, I neglected to extend the top section of the telescoping whip. Doh! Once I pulled the top section out and re-installed the whip, all was right with the world again.
Despite getting off to a slow start, my results weren’t too bad (by my standards). I finished with 36 contacts, including one known park-to-park contact. I had one DX contact with IW2NXI.
I finished my activation just in the nick of time. An hour after I got home, there was a major geomagnetic storm in progress. Timing is everything.
73, Craig WB3GCK
WB3GCK QRP Amateur Radio 
I’ve done that before too Craig. My Chinese 18.5 ft whip has 12 pullout sections and it’s so easy to miss one. BTW, I heard the TR35 doesn’t have any SWR meter, how do you check SWR, external tuner?
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I use the T1 ATU to touch up the SWR on 40M and 30M. The T1’s status LEDs indicated an SWR of 3:1 (or greater) on 40M. Normally, the T1 brings the SWR down to 1:1 in a couple of seconds.
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