I have the exact same configuration that I inherited from a ham who moved
into a retirement community. He had used the thing for many years, my guess
is he bought it back in the 70's. He had never had any problems with it,
running a SB-200 kilowatt linear on it.

I bought the plastics and stainless steel replacment kits from HyGain,
completely rebuilt it, and retuned it to the "compromise" frequencies that
WB2TT mentioned. I've had it up about a month now and used it from 14.070
PSK up to 14.250 SSB with the amplifier, and with no problems whatsoever. I
haven't made a graph of the SWR v.s. frequency, but as I said, I'm running
the kilowatt and haven't had any problems in just the month that it's been
up. Now that the wet Seattle winter is setting in, I guess we'll see if I
have any arcing when it gets damp.

The BN-86 is such a clunky balun anyway, I'm hoping that it will fry so I
can replace it with something that looks a little nicer. But for the price
(the whole works was free for the price of getting it off his property so he
could sell his home), I'm not complaining.

73, Dave, WA0TTN

"Ralph Mowery" wrote in message
...
I picked up a used Hy-GAin TH3-MK3 and BN-86 balun used at a hamfest today
with the paper work. It had only been in use a short time and looked new.
I am a 30 year ham but most of my work has been weak signal on 144 and 432
mhz. This is my first beam for the DC bands. Most of my vhf/uhf beams are
broad enough to cover the whole band without a tuner. I noticed the beam
could be used with a home made coil of coax for a choke or the balun could
be used. Nothing new sofar. Then the balun says not to use the the balun
with a tuner because of high voltages causing arcing over. Still nothing
new. I am planning on running the nominal 100 watt rig and maybe later
getting an amp that will run about 600 watts out. I plan on mostly phone
and the upper end of the cw portion of 20 meters for the digital modes. I
am well awear of all the theory of baluns and chokes but what to people
that
have used the beam and choke/ balun have to say. Do I use the coax choke,
use a ferrite current choke or the thing that HY-Gain supplies ? I don't
really care if the patern is off to one side or some of the more common
stories about radiating coax.

I can read theory all day but I would like to hear from people that have
used or seen the beam in use.