Tag: cushcraft ma-5b

Replacing my Cushcraft MA-5B with a G3TXQ Broadband Hexbeam

I’ve mentioned a couple of times recently that I’d ordered a replacement aerial and it was delivered on Friday.  I bought a G3TXQ designed Broadband Hexbeam, from Ant, MW0JXE.  Ant manufactures these on demand and so therefore there’s a waiting list, it took around six weeks from order to delivery but it was well worth […]

Cushcraft MA-5B is repaired with a new MT1 trap

Cushcraft were always known for good quality products but some years ago they were taken over by MFJ.  It’s no secret that MFJ have a bit of a reputation for poor quality control and they may or may not deserve the many nicknames that they’ve been given. Personally, I’ve had no problems with any of […]

One of the traps on my Cushcraft MA-5B has melted

Today I took down my Cushcraft MA-5B again to investigate the problem of high SWR on 20m and 15m and after a struggle to get the traps on the driven element disassembled, this is what I found. The bottom section was taken from the ‘hot’ side of the feed, ie the centre core of the […]

More problems with my Cushcraft MA-5B

There I was, at quarter past eight this morning calling CQ in the April Fools Day contest on 20m 😉 when I noticed that my SWR had gone from 1.1:1 to 3.5:1.  Something was clearly wrong so I stopped calling straight away and started to investigate. The first thing I did was to tune around […]

More work on the Cushcraft MA-5B along with VSWR plots

After I replaced the balun and coax tails on my MA-5B, I posted recently to say I wasn’t quite as happy with the results as I could have been.  I contacted Bob at Balun Designs who suggested that if I’d made the coax tails a different length to the originals that I may need to […]

A replacement balun for my Cushcraft MA-5B from Balun Designs

After the investigative work a couple of weeks ago where I tracked the fault on my Cushcraft MA-5B to the cable between the balun (matching network) and the 12m/17m element I decided that I wanted to replace the entire balun, including the two coax tails out to the elements.  I figured that because one tail […]