11/19/2002 | N9OH Had a good day Saturday, getting most of the mults out of the way on a 100% S&P effort. Sometime Saturday night, my amp started arcing on all bands -- and i ended up turning it off and running the rest of the contest at 100w. It became harder and harder to work those stations -- even close ones. KA9FOX up in WI thought i was QRP for crying out loud. Sunday morning came and my wife had compelling reaons for me to do chores and yardwork rather than "play radio" as she calls it. I spent a few hours in the garage working on various things and even got suckered into putting up xmas lights on the front of the house. Finally It was about 5pm and i was "free" to get back to radio. I figured i could at least pull a sweep, even if i didn't make the # of Q's i had hoped. Well, thats when my wife thought it would be a good time to tell me that our dog Emma had decided to attack my coax that feeds my vertical out back. The coax is about 50 feet of direct-burial coax with the last foot above ground -- also including a rf choke via 10 turns of coax around a 6" diameter or whatever. Still about 1 foot of coax exposed (real length is longer). Well, the dog first ate through the rope and tape holding the coax turns in place. Then pulled on the cable for a while and dug up about 5 feet of cable that was buried! Then she went for the big one.... she ate right through that coax. This English Springer Spaniel of 6 months had an appetite for plastic and copper. Ripped the shield off of the base of the antenna and then chewed right through a second piece of coax -- insulator and all. I'm not sure how much she ate. I hope it was good. Well I forgot to mention that before my wife told me about this -- i had made 7 contacts (15 and 10 meters). I have no idea what was radiating. The coax??? Wow. Kudos to those stations who worked me with my coax laying on the ground as my antenna. I did hear my rig clicking and i had to back the power down.... which should have been a clue. After i saw the SWR sky high was when i decided that something was up and then the story came out. I've attached two pictures.... one of the dog and the remains of the coax. The other of the base of the vertical and the chewed off end of the coax there.

I must come up with a way to protect the cable after I repair it. Haven't yet.... as i need to drop the whole antenna to repair the base. Dumb dogs. Supposed to be man's best friend... turns out to be HAM's worst foe! :)

73 - Steve -- N9OH