I’ve had my LEOpack antennas about 8 years, but over the winter my station became almost totally deaf on 2 meters. I took the 2 meter beam down and cleaned up a bunch of corrosion around the coax connector, and that seems to have helped the situation, but...
I checked the antenna with my MFJ Antenna Analyzer (which I did not have back when I first assembled these antennas) and find that the 2 meter beam is resonant at about 143.95 MHz — just below the 2 meter ham band. Up at 145.9, where I would LIKE it to be resonant, my SWR is about 2.5:1. Pretty high.
Messing with the tuning sliders only made things worse (these adjust impedance and not necessarily resonance), so I’m wondering, has anyone else found it necessary to trim the elements on these?
My calculations are that about 1/8” off each end of the DEs would bring it up the 2 MHz needed. Opinions?