Redundancy ?

My apologies to chasers I did not hear, and chasers I heard but could not contact!
I went to two easy summits today W6/NC-432 and W6/NC-209. My radios worked properly, and my batteries were fully charged. When I got to W6/NC-209 I planned for an HF activation and set up my 53 foot end fed wire - got weird (erratic SWR) results from the antenna tuner and double checked and tightened everything. So I switched to the 30 foot wire but continued to get erratic SWR results. After checking the balun several times I reached over to the coax and about 12 inches from the radio the coax was broken and was hot to the touch! I only had one piece of coax to connect the antennas to the radio! Ugh! The patience of the chasers is greatly appreciated. I always carry spare batteries; now I will begin to carry spare coax!

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I was listening for you and was surprised to hear nothing. But don’t feel bad - a few months ago when I was testing all my new SOTA gear and antennas I went to a local hill to test everything and could not get neither my doublet nor my EFHW to tune at all. In the end it turned out to be the short 2’ long RG-58 jumper cable (actually a bad BNC plug connector joint) between the rig and the tuner. Small things can bring everything to a quick halt. Hope to hear you on your next activation…

Larry VE7EA